French politicians across the spectrum on Tuesday said that the country’s values about gender equality were not negotiable, soon after women staffers at the Eiffel Tower were removed from their workstations during a visit by a Hindu religious group.

On Monday, the staff at the monument went on a brief strike to protest the removal of women colleagues during a visit by a delegation of the Hindu denomination Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha on Saturday.

The group consecrated its first major temple in France, located in the suburbs of Paris on Sunday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the ceremony virtually.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right political party National Rally, said on Tuesday that France will never accept restrictions on women’s presence.

Le Pen, who is viewed as one of the main contenders in next year’s presidential election, also demanded greater transparency about what happened on Monday.

En France, nous n’accepterons jamais que la présence des femmes soit « limitée ».

Toute la lumière doit été faite sur ce qui s’est passé lors de cette visite de la Tour Eiffel. https://t.co/rxdGKHjhfQ

— Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) September 7, 2026

Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally, said that the “degrading demand” allegedly made by BAPS should never have been met.

“In a free country like France, gender equality is respected, and no religious reason can override women's dignity,” Bardella said on social media. “Our civilisational values are not negotiable.”

Former French Prime Minister Michel Barnier said that the Eiffel Tower, located in the heart of his parliamentary constituency, is “the common heritage” of all Parisians and the French people.

Therefore, the order “aimed at making women disappear from this space” was “utterly unacceptable”, said the leader of the centre-right party, The Republicans.

“In France, it is not practices from elsewhere that dictate to women how to dress or exist in public spaces,” Barnier said on social media. “Women are not hidden. They are not erased. They are respected, and their freedom is defended.”

He demanded an explanation from the company that manages the Eiffel Tower.

Je prends connaissance du mouvement de colère des salarié·es de la tour Eiffel et je veux leur dire que leur mécontentement est légitime.

Il n’est pas acceptable que de telles conditions puissent être tolérées. Ce ne sont ni mes valeurs, ni celles que doit porter la tour Eiffel,… https://t.co/3srttJpxPo

— Emmanuel Grégoire (@egregoire) September 7, 2026

Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire also said that conditions being placed on Eiffel Tower staffers cannot be accepted. He said that women and men must be able to move freely at the site without any gender discrimination and promised an investigation into the matter.

“Equality between women and men will never stop at the foot of our historical monuments, nor anywhere in this city,” the Socialist Party leader asserted on social media. “It must be applied everywhere, for everyone.”

French Equality Minister Aurore Bergé said that France does not ask women to “erase themselves” and that “no dogma, no religion is above the laws of the Republic”.

The strike by the staffers was widely covered by French media, including reports by Paris-based news agency AFP, state-owned international news television network France 24, and newspapers Le Parisien and Le Monde.

Indian Alliance Paris, a collective of Indian students and professionals in Paris, said the incident should not become “fodder for more racism”.

In a social media post, it described BAPS as a “regressive sect” and said that it did not represent all Hindus or India.

“BAPS is a regressive sect, politically connected to India's far-right,” said the collective. “It should be treated like the sexist casteist backward sect it is.”

The strike against gender discrimination

On Monday, the Eiffel Tower staff said that female employees had been instructed “to make themselves invisible in order to welcome this delegation”, AFP reported. The staffers said they were shocked to have been put in such a situation.

“Some were asked to leave their posts and withdraw to other areas,” the staffers were quoted as saying. “In some posts, they were replaced by men. And all female employees were instructed not to go through or cross certain areas while the delegation was present.”

The Société d’exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, the company that manages the monument, said that the Hindu delegation had asked for the visit to be arranged to minimise “interactions with women”, AFP reported.

The firm stated that such conditions “should not have been accepted”, as they were inconsistent with its values and the principle of gender equality. It said that it would “accept the consequences” of the incident.

BAPS Paris said that it respects “the concerns raised” and takes them very seriously. The group said that to the best of its knowledge, at no point was anyone prevented from accessing the Eiffel Tower.

However, it apologised for “any pain or inconvenience caused” and said it believes in the universal values of mutual respect and service.

“Due to the size of our delegation, the visit was arranged in conjunction with the Eiffel Tower team at the start of normal opening hours to avoid disrupting or inconveniencing others,” BAPS Paris said.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Also read: France riots: Why Hindu nationalists in India are backing the French far right

The National Investigation Agency on Tuesday filed a chargesheet against seven foreign nationals who had been arrested in March for allegedly having links to ethnic armed groups in Myanmar that are hostile to India, reported PTI.

Although they had been arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the agency has not invoked the anti-terror law in the chargesheet against the seven persons.

They have been chargesheeted for illegally entering, staying and moving in India under the 2025 Immigration and Foreigners Act.

Of those named, one person – Matthew Aaron Van Dyke – is from the United States, while the other six – Hurba Petro, Slyviak Taras, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Stefankiv Marian, Honcharuk Maksim and Kaminskyi Viktor – are Ukrainian citizens.

The agency arrested all seven on March 13. They were allegedly involved in supplying weapons and military equipment to ethnic armed groups operating in Myanmar, as well as providing them with training.

Investigators alleged that they had entered India on valid visas, but later travelled to Mizoram without the mandatory restricted area permit. They were also accused of entering Myanmar and meeting ethnic groups hostile to India.

Officials alleged that the individuals received drone deliveries from Europe while in Mizoram.

They were reportedly arrested in Delhi, Kolkata and Lucknow while trying to leave India.

On Tuesday, Special Public Prosecutor Rahul Tyagi told Special Judge Prashant Sharma that although the anti-terror law had not been invoked in Tuesday’s chargesheet, investigation into possible UAPA offences would continue, The Print reported.

He said the agency could file a supplementary chargesheet if further investigation establishes an offence under the Act.

Edited by Sneha.

“Very low rain this year; only one rain in this season till now,” said 35-year-old farmer Vipin Kumar Yadav from Manipur village in Mahua block of Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district, this July, as the agriculture-dependent region waited for rains.

Pointing to the farm pond, or khet talab, dug on his land, Yadav said the difference from last year was stark. “Look at this, how little water is in my pond this time. Last year around this time, the entire pond was full. I used that water in October-November to irrigate my wheat crop. This year the water is low; the 10-foot-deep pond couldn’t even fill up to five feet. I am worried: how will the wheat and mustard crops get water this year?”

The concern is significant in a region where much of agriculture remains dependent on rainfall. By August 1, rainfall in Banda was 26% below normal for the monsoon season.

The pond was dug in Yadav’s field in May 2024. Last year, he used the stored water to irrigate four acres of wheat twice, more than doubling his wheat yield from about 3.5-4.5 quintals per acre to 9-10 quintals per acre. This year, however, the pond has received much less water.

The concern over rainfall comes as forecasts point to a strengthening El Niño. On July 30, the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences said in a press release that El Niño had intensified from weak conditions in June to moderate levels in July and could strengthen further to the very strong category during October-December.

On August 13, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in an advisory that there is a more than 90% chance that El Niño will become very strong in the coming months. It also estimated a 69% chance that the October-December period could see an El Niño stronger than any recorded since 1950.

The Indian government has responded by pushing for greater water storage. Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has directed that ponds, farm ponds, check dams and other water-conservation structures be repaired and strengthened, while water-harvesting work under employment scheme Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Act (VB-G RAM G) and other rural development programmes, have been prioritised.

Vipin’s experience shows the potential of such measures. But his elder brother Keshav Yadav’s experience offers a different perspective.

A pond was dug in Keshav’s farm alongside Vipin’s. Within a year, its embankment on one side broke. Following that, silt collection reduced the depth of the 10-foot deep pond.

“Water doesn’t stay in my pond at all. If water remained in it, I would have irrigated the mustard crop this year. Last year, I managed to irrigate two acres of mustard with this very pond. This time I won’t be able to irrigate it,” Keshav said.

A few studies have shown that farmers in Bundelkhand, where Vipin and Keshav’s farms are located, who have adopted soil and water conservation measures have seen increased crop productivity and net farm revenue.

An old idea

Farm ponds are common in Bundelkhand, which is among India’s most climate-vulnerable semi-arid regions, where recurrent droughts, rising temperatures and increasingly erratic monsoon rainfall have made farming more uncertain.

The region has a long tradition of storing rainwater in ponds, tanks, lakes and wells. A study published in the Indian Journal of History of Science documents how the Chandelas and, later, the Bundela rulers developed interconnected systems of water-harvesting structures to manage the region’s scarce water resources.

The study also notes that while the region experienced a major drought roughly once every 16 years during the 18th and 19th centuries, the frequency of droughts tripled between 1968 and 1992. The paper quotes a media report published in 2016 and highlights that the region has experienced “15th consecutive crop losses and 13 droughts in the previous 15 years.”

Even now, much of Bundelkhand’s agriculture remains dependent on rainfall. According to the Uttar Pradesh Agriculture Statistics 2022-’23, only 47% of Chitrakoot’s net sown area is irrigated, compared with 54% in Mahoba and 61% in Banda.

As a result, governments in the recent past have sought to expand this traditional approach. In 2009, the Union Cabinet approved a Rs 7,266 crore special package for drought mitigation and integrated development in Bundelkhand. It included a target of constructing 30,000 farm ponds across Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, along with 20,000 new dug wells in each state.

Uttar Pradesh launched the Khet-Talab Yojana in 2016-17 under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana. In the first phase of the scheme, 2,000 ponds were constructed across all development blocks of the seven districts of Bundelkhand at an expenditure of Rs 1.22 core. It is now operated under the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana. Under the scheme, the government provides 50% of the cost of a small 22×20×3-metre pond, amounting to Rs 52,500.

Ground experience

On the evening of July 20, it rained for the second time that season in Doda Mafi village of Chitrakoot’s Manikpur block. But 65-year-old farmer Sunder Kol was not excited by it. His farm pond, he said, could not retain water because of sandy soil.

“I haven’t received any benefit from the pond. Last year too, I couldn’t irrigate my mustard crop; I only got a yield of two quintals,” he said. Kol farms two acres but now depends on daily wage labour to support his family. He also lost 0.25 acre of land to the pond.

In Mangawan panchayat, 42-year-old Mullu Kol’s pond, dug in 2009-10, has lost much of its capacity because of siltation. Its depth has fallen from six feet to about three feet. Mullu said it once irrigated two acres but can now irrigate only one acre. Since wheat requires three rounds of irrigation, he grows mustard instead. “Not being able to cultivate wheat creates grain and fodder shortages for us,” he said.

The experience of 65-year-old Bulli Mawasi from Bambiya gram panchayat is even more stark. His pond was constructed under the Bundelkhand Package through the rural employment scheme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in 2009-10. It was supposed to be 10 feet deep but was dug only five feet before the work stopped, reportedly due to insufficient funds.

“In the last 15 years, I haven’t been able to do a single drop of irrigation from this pond,” Mawasi said. Water seeps away. To resolve the seepage issue, departmental officials had discussed installing a plastic lining (mulching) for the pond, but it was never carried out. About 0.25 acres of his land were also taken for the pond. “I suffered losses from the pond rather than gaining any benefit,” he said.

The pond is not located in the farm’s natural catchment area and lacks a properly designed inlet to channel runoff. Mawasi now pays Rs 250 an hour to rent irrigation equipment and about Rs 1,000 for diesel. One 10-hour irrigation costs him Rs 3,500, which he borrows.

Hydrogeology expert and retired professor Shashikant Tripathi of Mahatma Gandhi Chitrakoot Gramodaya Vishwavidyalaya, a government university in Satna district, said poor site selection is a major reason for such failures. In Bundelkhand’s plateau terrain, he said, “The failure to choose the right site is a major reason why the ponds fail.” He said that site selection should consider the underlying rock, slope, drainage density, soil type and land use. A scientifically selected pond can retain water for four to five months.

Chitrakoot Soil Conservation Officer Baljeet Bahadur acknowledged that seepage is a problem in sandy-soil areas but said, “There is no budget for seepage control, desiltation or maintenance.” A 22×20×3-metre pond costs Rs 1.05 lakh, with the government providing Rs 52,500. He said farmers often limit excavation to the amount covered by government assistance, which affects pond quality.

The problems are not limited to older ponds. In Mahoba, where rainfall was 43% below normal by August 1, 28-year-old Mukesh Kumar’s pond, dug in April 2023, had lost up to three feet of depth due to siltation. He said even one irrigation this year would be significant, but he could not afford to have the pond desilted. He also suggested that drip or sprinkler irrigation could reduce the amount of water needed.

The ground experience points to four recurring problems, including inadequate water, seepage, siltation and poor maintenance, that have made several ponds useless.

A 2023 case study published by Erasmus University Rotterdam, which traced the scheme’s roots to a community initiative launched in 2003, noted that the focus shifted towards creating visible physical structures after the government adopted it under a new scheme.

The paper said that it was originally intended to revive traditional rainwater-harvesting practices, raise awareness among local farmers, rejuvenate old community ponds and promote small-scale individual ponds. When the government adopted it in 2018, it helped scale up pond construction. But communication with farmers, frugality, design flexibility and the incorporation of local and experiential knowledge were sidelined.

What needs to change

Experts and officials say farm ponds can be made more effective, but their design and maintenance need to change.

Gaya Prasad Gopal, founder of a non-profit organisation Akhil Bhartiya Samaj Seva Sansthan, which works for the conservation of water and natural resources in Bundelkhand, said seepage can be reduced by lining the pond bed and walls with black polythene and covering them with a layer of black clay soil.

Mahoba soil conservation officer P. C. Vishwakarma said schemes like farm ponds are extremely important for Bundelkhand. A standard 22×20×3-meter pond can hold about 11.5 lakh litres of water, theoretically enough for three rounds of irrigation for a hectare of wheat. The ponds can also reduce soil erosion and help recharge groundwater, but he acknowledged that they may not provide sufficient irrigation water in years of low rainfall.

Tripathi said, “Maintenance remains another major hurdle. Farmers often assume maintenance is the state’s responsibility, but since they are the direct beneficiaries, they must also take ownership of upkeep. The government should introduce provisions that encourage farmers by offering financial assistance for maintenance, bearing a share of the costs incurred in desiltation and other structural repairs.”

Pond dimensions should not be fixed but determined by the farm’s cultivable area, crops and irrigation requirements. He also called for financial support for maintenance and desiltation.

Vishwakarma said there is currently no provision in the scheme for pond maintenance, which is left to farmers. Kaushal Garg, senior hydrology scientist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), said Gram Panchayats should also take responsibility for maintenance, with activities such as desiltation, bunding and repairs supported through programmes such as VB-GRAM-G. “Such initiatives will only remain sustainable if local community participation is ensured,” he said.

Garg said pond construction should begin with a scientific assessment of water availability, rainfall patterns, soil and slope conditions. “These interventions must be science-led,” he said.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

More than 34 lakh persons in Bihar have been affected by floods in 13 districts, with the situation worsening after the Ganga crossed its danger mark at two places on Tuesday morning, PTI reported.

At least 20 persons have died in the floods as of Monday, The New Indian Express reported. The state government has announced Rs 4 lakh in compensation for the families of those who died.

Bihar has recorded 79.6 mm of rainfall in September so far, 31% above normal, PTI quoted the Bihar Meteorological Service Centre as saying.

#WATCH | Katihar, Bihar | Flood-like conditions prevail in Katihar due to rising water levels in the Ganga, Kosi, and Barandi rivers. Local residents have been severely affected as villages across the district have become submerged. pic.twitter.com/NZ9LhDoBYu

— ANI (@ANI) September 8, 2026

On Tuesday, a boat carrying 10 persons capsized in Kharik Raghopur in Bhagalpur district. State Disaster Relief Force personnel rescued everyone on board, the news agency reported.

Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary visited flood-hit areas and community kitchens in Vaishali and Saran on Monday.

Leader of the Opposition Tejashwi Yadav has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to declare the floods a “national disaster” and provide Rs 5,000 crore in immediate assistance to the state, The Hindu reported.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Gauhati High Court has directed the Assam government to pay Rs 2 lakh in compensation to the son of a Bengali-origin Muslim woman who was forced into Bangladesh. Jahanara Begum was declared a foreigner by a foreigners tribunal in 2019 and deported to Bangladesh in June.

The High Court on Monday passed a similar order in the case of Mumtaz Begum, who had also been forced out into Bangladesh, directing the state to pay her Rs 2 lakh in compensation.

These are the first instances in which the court has imposed costs on the state for forcing a person to Bangladesh in violation of deportation rules. Read on.

In a first, Gauhati HC asks Assam government to pay Rs 2 lakh to woman pushed into Bangladesh, reports Rokibuz Zaman

The Bombay High Court refused to quash the criminal defamation case against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for remarks in which he referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “choron ke sardar” or “leader of thieves”. Gandhi had been booked on a complaint by a Bharatiya Janata Party worker.

The complainant contended that Gandhi’s remarks, made in September 2018 while he was speaking about the Rafale fighter jet deal, were directed at Modi and, by extension, at the BJP and its members. This lowered the reputation of the prime minister and the party, the BJP worker claimed.

Gandhi had challenged the maintainability of the complaint and moved the High Court, arguing that the remarks did not name any political party or its members. Read on.

The Supreme Court asked the Uttar Pradesh government whether detentions under the National Security Act can be made based on a confession made by persons accused in the matter while they are in police custody. The court was hearing a petition challenging the preventive detention of Mulla Afroz, the alleged organiser of the November 2024 Sambhal violence.

Afroz had been arrested on the basis of a confession he made while he was in police custody. The National Security Act allows authorities to detain a person without trial for up to a year. Read on.

The Gujarat High Court rejected a plea by religious leader Asumal Harpalani, also known as Asaram Bapu, seeking 20 days of temporary bail in a 2013 rape case. The 85-year-old is serving a life sentence after being convicted by a sessions court in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar for raping a minor at his ashram between 2001 and 2006.

His counsel told the High Court that Asaram had already been arrested, chargesheeted and tried in the case, and that he was not seeking temporary bail on medical grounds. The state opposed the plea, arguing that Asaram had not given any independent reason for seeking temporary bail. Read on.

After women staffers at the Eiffel Tower were removed from their workstations during a visit by a Hindu religious group, French politicians said that the country’s values about gender equality were not negotiable. The women had been removed during a visit by a delegation of the Hindu denomination Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha on Saturday.

The Société d’exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, the company that manages the monument, said that the Hindu delegation had asked for the visit to be arranged to minimise “interactions with women”. The staff at the Eiffel Tower went on a brief strike to protest this on Monday.

Jordan Bardella, the president of the far-right political party National Rally, said that the “degrading demand” allegedly made by BAPS should never have been met. Read on.

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The Gauhati High Court on Monday directed the Assam government to pay Rs 2 lakh in compensation to the son of a Bengali-origin Muslim woman who was forced into Bangladesh.

Jahanara Begum was declared a foreigner by a foreigners tribunal in 2019 and deported to Bangladesh in June.

Foreigners tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies unique to Assam that decide on matters of nationality on the basis of documentary evidence.

The High Court on Monday passed a similar order in the case of Mumtaz Begum, who had also been forced out into Bangladesh, directing the state to pay her Rs 2 lakh in compensation.

These are the first instances in which the court has imposed costs on the state for forcing a person to Bangladesh in violation of deportation rules.

In the case of Jahanara Begum, her son had challenged the manner in which his mother was detained and deported.

The court held that the authorities had failed to provide Jahanara Begum, or any adult member of her family, with a copy of the tribunal’s order before deporting her. This denied her an opportunity to challenge the decision before the High Court, it said.

Jahanara Begum had challenged the tribunal’s 2019 decision before the High Court. In April, the court set aside the decision after finding that the tribunal had failed to consider the evidence of three of the four witnesses examined in the case. It sent the matter back to the tribunal for a fresh decision.

Jahanara Begum appeared before the tribunal on May 29. In her petition, she had asked for the hearing to be postponed, but the request was rejected.

She was subsequently taken into custody by the Border Police.

Her family was initially unable to trace her. Her son learnt that she had been taken to a detention centre and obtained a certified copy of the tribunal’s fresh opinion only on June 5.

According to the Border Security Force, Jahanara Begum was handed over by the Border Police on June 13 and deported to Bangladesh in the intervening night of June 13 and June 14.

Assam’s tribunals have stripped about 1,30,000 people of Indian citizenship in the last four years. The process has often been criticised by higher courts as arbitrary and loaded against the poor and marginalised.

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

“Declared foreigners” are typically long-term residents with families and properties in Assam, who have failed to prove their citizenship in foreigner tribunals through documentary evidence.

Inputs by Rokibuz Zaman. Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sneha.

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday refused to quash the criminal defamation case against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for remarks in which he referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “choron ke sardar” or “leader of thieves”, Live Law reported.

The complaint, filed by a Bharatiya Janata Party worker, pertains to a speech made by Gandhi in September 2018 while speaking about the Rafale fighter jet deal. During a rally in Rajasthan, Gandhi referred to Modi as “choron ke sardar”, the Economic Times reported.

Gandhi and the Congress had also used the slogan “chowkidar chor hai” or the “the watchman is a thief” during the 2019 elections campaign to claim that Modi had acted as a middleman for industrialist Anil Ambani in the Rafale deal. A separate defamation case was filed over the slogan.

The complainant contended that Gandhi’s remarks were directed at Modi and, by extension, at the BJP and its members, lowering their reputation.

He argued that by referring to Modi, a BJP member, as “choron ke sardar”, Gandhi had portrayed BJP members as “thieves”, giving party workers the right to initiate defamation proceedings, Live Law reported.

Gandhi had challenged the maintainability of the complaint and moved the High Court, arguing that the remarks did not name any political party or its members.

Justice Nitin Borkar rejected the argument, holding that the BJP, being a registered national political party, was a clearly identifiable body, Live Law reported.

“On a prima facie reading of the statement describing the PM, who is member of BJP as a commander in thief at this stage, it cannot be said that the impugned comment is limited only to the senior leadership of the party,” Live Law quoted the bench as observing. “Whether the imputation was in substance and what impact it will have on members of the party will have to be considered at the stage of trial.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday rejected a plea by religious leader Asumal Harpalani, also known as Asaram Bapu, seeking 20 days of temporary bail in a 2013 rape case, Live Law reported.

The 85-year-old is serving a life sentence after being convicted by a sessions court in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar for raping a minor at his ashram between 2001 and 2006.

His counsel told the Gujarat High Court that Asaram had already been arrested, chargesheeted and tried in the case, and that he was not seeking temporary bail on medical grounds.

His counsel cited an August 3 order of the Rajasthan High Court in a separate case granting Asaram 20 days of parole on account of his age and for having spent over 13 years in jail. The Rajasthan High Court had rejected the authorities’ reasons for denying parole as “misleading and figments of imagination without any basis”.

Asaram had applied for parole before the Gujarat authorities, but his request was rejected. He then approached the Gujarat High Court seeking temporary bail, arguing that there was no objection from the state or the prosecuting agency to his release.

The state opposed the plea, arguing that Asaram had not given any independent reason for seeking temporary bail. It said the Rajasthan High Court’s order granting parole in the separate case could not by itself justify bail in the Gujarat case, Live Law reported.

The state also argued that parole was not a right and that temporary bail could not be granted without a separate ground.

The Gujarat High Court also considered the Supreme Court’s orders concerning Asaram’s health. The Supreme Court had sought a medical report from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, which found that he did not require hospitalisation but needed round-the-clock assistance by trained caregivers.

The High Court said it found no reason to consider his temporary bail plea at this stage, noting that the Supreme Court had allowed Asaram to approach it again if his health worsened, Live Law reported.

Cases against Asaram

In January 2023, a sessions court in Gandhinagar sentenced Asaram to life imprisonment for repeatedly raping a 16-year-old girl at his ashram between 2001 and 2006.

In April 2018, a sessions court in Jodhpur also sentenced Asaram to life imprisonment in a separate case for raping the minor at his ashram in 2013. He had been convicted under several provisions of the Indian Penal Code, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Juvenile Justice Act.

In May this year, the Rajasthan High Court acquitted Asaram on charges related to gangrape. However, it upheld his conviction for rape.

While rejecting Asaram’s petition to set aside the life sentence, the High Court bench had held that the charges of rape under the Indian Penal Code, sexual assault under the Pocso Act and offences under the Juvenile Justice Act had been proved.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Uttar Pradesh government whether detentions under the National Security Act can be made based on a confession made by an accused person while they are in police custody, Live Law reported.

The court was hearing a petition challenging the preventive detention of Mulla Afroz, the alleged “mastermind” behind the November 2024 Sambhal violence. Afroz had been arrested on the basis of a confession he made while he was in police custody, Live Law reported.

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

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

Although the Allahabad High Court had granted him bail, the Uttar Pradesh government passed an order to detain Afroz under the National Security Act on October 13, 2025.

Afroz approached the Supreme Court after the High Court upheld the detention order.

During Tuesday’s hearing, the bench questioned the relevance and value of the custodial confession.

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

The Uttar Pradesh government defended the detention, saying that it relied on the alleged “likelihood” of Afroz causing violence or affecting public order. The state argued that where the available material indicates such a likelihood, it would be sufficient to justify preventive detention, Live Law reported.

On the custodial confession, the state argued that whether it was relevant or not was a matter to be considered during legal proceedings.

The Supreme Court reserved its order on Afroz’s plea.

Edited by Sneha.

In mid-August, an organisation that represents an indigenous community in Arunachal Pradesh blacklisted four researchers from carrying out research in the Dibang Valley.

The organisation, the Idu Mishmi Cultural and Literary Society, or IMCLS, is the “apex body” of the Idu Mishmi community in the valley. It stated in a press release that the researchers were blacklisted for violating the community’s “code of research ethics”, which it first published in 2024.

In an emailed statement to Scroll, the society said that the researchers “resorted to discriminatory practices and ventured into community areas despite final consent and approval pending” from the community’s Research and Ethics Review Board, or RERB.

The researchers were Rajkamal Goswami, affiliated with the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, or ATREE, Aavika Dhanda, who was formerly affiliated with the same organisation, Krushnamegh Kunte from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, and Fahim Khan, from the Indian Foundation for Butterflies Trust.

In a text message response to queries from Scroll, Goswami said, “We hold ethical research practices in the highest regard, and fully support the IMCLS code in spirit and intent.” He added that ATREE “had taken cognisance” of the body’s decision, and were “seeking to understand the circumstances and events that led to this action”.

The director of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, LS Shashidhara, told Scroll that the institution was “saddened” by the body’s decision. “Our researchers were making sincere efforts to obtain approval from the RERB of IMCLS, and there appears to have been some misunderstanding,” he said. Scroll also emailed Khan, seeking responses to the society’s move – this story will be updated if he responds.

The society’s move has its roots in efforts in recent years by indigenous and tribal groups to protect their culture and land from what they say are exploitative practices of researchers, rooted in colonial methods.

Outside India, such moves trace back to the late 1990s, when Indigenous communities in the global north and several African countries developed their own research guidelines or protocols to be followed by anyone conducting research with them or on their lands.

Tribal studies scholars welcome the introduction of such guidelines in India as a step towards decolonising harmful and colonial research practices. “There was a time when most tribal communities in India were not literate, and researchers, often anthropologists, could visit them and do anything they wanted,” said Adivasi sociologist Virginuis Xaxa. “They would often misinterpret these communities, their customs and context. It was a form of violence on these communities.”

Xaxa added that communities’ moves to develop “their own research protocols” was “a step towards their empowerment and self-determination”.

Other communities

The Idu Mishmi, is not the only Indian community to take steps recently to institute rules for researchers.

On August 10, the tribal council of Little and Great Nicobar published a set of 13 guidelines for researchers working on the islands.

The guidelines laid out several steps that any team of researchers that planned to visit an area that fell within the islands’ tribal reserves would have to follow. For instance, they would have to inform the chairman of the tribal council, and consult respective village captains before planning the visit. They would also have to submit several documents with the council, including details of the project and copies of tribal area permits issued to them by the relevant district administrations.

Barnabas Manju, chairman of the tribal council, explained that the move was prompted by an unprecedented rush of researchers on the Nicobar islands. “In the last few years we have been noticing a lot more researchers on the island,” Manju said. “We worry what their research might result in.”

The communities’ fears are particularly acute because, since 2021, the government has denotified protected areas for leatherback turtles and given permissions for lakhs of trees to be cut to make 166 sq km of the island available to develop the Great Nicobar infrastructure project.

Community bodies see such protective moves as particularly crucial because at present there exist no dedicated laws or policies in India that pertain to research ethics for researchers working with tribal and other marginalised communities.

While the bodies’ policies do not form official law, they are backed by both international and domestic conventions and laws to safeguard tribal and Indigenous communities, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which India has endorsed, and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.

Community leaders of the Idu Mishmi and the Nicobarese said their guidelines were centred on the principle of free, prior, and informed consent, which has long underpinned the measures and policies of Indigenous communities across the world with respect to research, as well as administrative and legislative measures that impact them.

Xaxa noted that researchers often “impose their own interpretations on Indigenous communities” while “failing to understand the community’s worldview”. The Idu Mishmi code seeks to safeguard not just members of the community and their resources, but also their “cultural and spiritual values, customary practices, traditional knowledge, beliefs including among physical and non-physical entities in the world”, he said.

Similarly, the Nicobarese guidelines remind researchers that “what might be a research site for you is our home”. The guidelines thus seek to safeguard their neighbouring community the Shompen, “the trees, plants, birds and animals of the land, the nallahs, forest patches, rocky islets on the coast” and the “ancestral spirits who reside in these spaces”.

The Idu Mishmi code

The Idu Mishmi code was authored by community member Dr Tilu Linggi, and launched as a book by the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Pema Khandu.

The code states that the Idu Mishmi are the “first indigenous community” in Arunachal Pradesh to have their own “community research protocol”. It describes the protocol as a step towards “decolonising and decentralising research and empowering local communities” based on “self-determination, respect, consent and equity”.

The society explained that the code was formulated after consultative community discussions in Dibang Valley about “several unethical and colonial practices of data appropriation and collection of geological and biological samples” that they had observed in the “Idu Mishmi areas in particular” and in “Arunachal Pradesh in general”.

They further noted that the “unethical use” of data taken from their land, “has led to policy-making that has impacted the community in negative ways”, such as their erasure from epistemology. For instance, “renowned research institutions” have, under the guise of discovering new species, given “taxonomic classification to species in their own institution’s name”, despite these species already being familiar to the community.

These concerns also extended to how governments classified lands that the community had historically used. The society stated that, “in the past the government had declared wildlife sanctuaries or protected/reserved areas without the consent of the community”. For instance, it described the notification of the Dibang Wildlife Sanctuary and the Mehao Wildlife Sanctuary by the state as “illegal” and a “betrayal” of the community.

Under the code, researchers looking to pursue research on Idu Mishmi land have to purchase a copy of the book, submit their proposal and additional documents to the body and undergo several rounds of online discussions with the review board, which may seek clarifications and suggest modifications to the proposal. This process applies to all researchers, including those from the community itself.

Researchers also have to obtain approval at the level of the village where the research will be conducted.

Since the code was announced, the society said, it has received over 44 research proposals from India and abroad. In the statement to Scroll, they noted that “most proposals are approved”.

The alleged violations

In the email to Scroll, the society stated that NCBS researchers failed to attend a planned in-person meeting despite committing in writing to do so. Meanwhile, the ATREE researchers, they noted, “never sought official permission from the IMCLS” to conduct their research “despite repeated requests”.

The society argued that such behaviour violated several principles of their community protocol. It also expressed displeasure with events that followed the researchers’ blacklisting, noting that they were “misleading reporters” and calling the development a “misunderstanding”.

NCBS’s Shashidhara told Scroll that while the institution’s researchers were “preparing responses to the queries” raised by the Idu Mishmi body, “they stayed at the same location with due approvals from the concerned officials for trekking and accommodation”.

He added, “No research activity was initiated. We remain committed to regulatory compliance and to conducting our work in accordance with IMCLS guidelines.” Further, he said, the institution would be taking “appropriate measures” to address the concerns raised by the society and “regain their confidence”.

Goswami, meanwhile, explained that in the Dibang Valley, the work he was involved with focused “on supporting the members of the Mekola clan of the Idu Mishmi Indigenous community in formalising a Community Conserved Area on their clan lands”.

He added, “We take the concerns raised around non-response seriously and have shared our full communication record directly with IMCLS. Based on our records, we responded to all communication received from them, and also attended all the meetings we were invited to. We have shared these details with IMCLS, and we are working to resolve all issues directly with IMCLS. We have reached out to the apex body for a dialogue.”

Further, he noted, ATREE was “committed to respecting the guidelines and ethos of the communities we work with. Once we have a clear understanding of the situation, we will take appropriate steps to address IMCLS’s concerns and continue strengthening our community-led conservation work together.”

In its statement to Scroll, the society said that while it did not intend to resort to “harsh measures” against researchers, if any proceeded with their work despite being blacklisted, they could face “legal repercussions”.

Going forward

Manju, the chairman of the tribal council of Little and Great Nicobar, meanwhile, noted that since the release of the guidelines, two researchers had complied with the initial steps and submitted all relevant documents with the Nicobarese community.

“We hope that the guidelines make researchers and their institutions a little more careful about their work here,” he said. He explained that usually researchers take a member of the Nicobarese community with them, as an assistant to navigate the forests, and that this also helps the community monitor the researchers’ compliance of the guidelines.

“If even after these guidelines they do not follow it, we will have to take a call on how they can make this more strict,” he said.

The Idu Mishmi society emphasised that there was a need for broader policies in the country to address these questions. But given the current atmosphere where “most of the decentralised aspects of power are being delegitimised”, it stated, there remained “little hope” of such a development. Nonetheless, the communities’ own efforts were a precedent toward “regulating unethical, extractive or undisclosed research practices”, they said, while also “balancing academic and community interests”.

The Reservation Hatao Andolan, which held a demonstration in Jantar Mantar last fortnight, has since rebranded itself the RHA Reservation Reforms Movement.

Its new charter demands a National Commission for the General Category, a rollback of the University Grants Commission’s 2026 caste equity rules and a dilution of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Atrocities Act through expanded provisions for preliminary inquiry and bail.

Its leaders have borrowed the language and street theatre of the Cockroach Janata Party movement that recently forced Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation.

But this second-hand vocabulary of public anger cannot disguise what this movement represents: a mobilisation of India’s already dominant castes seeking to dismantle the constitutional architecture built to correct centuries of exclusion. It echoes the campus agitation against the Mandal Commission in the 1990s that expanded quotas in educational institutions and government jobs for members of the Other Backward Classes.

The core claim of the RHA Reservation Reforms Movement is that quotas discriminate against the so-called general category – members of the dominant castes.

But this claim collapses the moment it meets evidence. Consider the higher judiciary, which has no caste reservations. Government data placed before Parliament this year showed that of 593 High Court judges appointed between January 2021 and January 2026, barely 4% came from the Scheduled Castes and about 2% from Scheduled Tribes. Nearly 80% belonged to the forward castes.

In the Supreme Court, independent tracking found that 12 of 33 sitting judges – roughly 36% – came from Brahmin communities alone, even though the group forms less than 5% of India’s population.

The pattern is repeated across the bureaucracy, academia, mainstream media, corporate boardrooms and men’s Test cricket – despite formal reservations at entry level in public sector institutions and open competition elsewhere. Forward caste groups making up roughly 15%-20% of the population hold overwhelming command of leadership in each of these arenas. In some cases, the presence crosses 90%.

If reservations were tilting the field against merit, the “unreserved” domains would look different.

🚨Thousands of protesters supporting "Reservation Hatao Andolan" gather in Delhi for protest pic.twitter.com/YTOUHwszhA

— The Tatva (@thetatvaindia) August 21, 2026

The movement has another favoured argument – that caste has stopped mattering and income alone should decide who benefits from affirmative action.

But this misreads the constitutional basis of reservation. The Supreme Court’s 1992 Indra Sawhney ruling grounded quotas in historically entrenched social and educational backwardness and inadequate representation rather than income, criteria already used by the separate Economically Weaker Sections quota for the general category.

It also runs against a basic sociological fact: large surveys, including the India Human Development Survey and Telangana’s 2024 caste survey, consistently find that fewer than 6% of Indian marriages cross caste lines. Well over 94% of Indians marry within the same caste.

Marriage patterns matter more than they first appear. Endogamy is the mechanism through which land, capital and professional networks stay locked within the same caste groups across generations. That is why intergenerational mobility in India remains so low. Caste background continues to shape income and occupation decades later.

Wealth data tell a similar story, with asset ownership and top income brackets skewed heavily toward the same forward castes that dominate the professions.

A society that reproduces its hierarchies this efficiently through marriage and inheritance is far from caste blind, despite the claims of the latest protest movement.

Representation and wealth data capture only part of what is at stake. Reservation and the legal protections around it are also about dignity, the guarantee that a citizen’s caste no longer decides whether they may be touched, seen or spoken of as an equal.

That such indignities persist even at the summit of public life became evident days ago, when a shuddhikaran, or purification ritual, was performed at a Haldwani rally ground last month after Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, a prominent Dalit leader, addressed a gathering there.

The state Bharatiya Janata Party chief defended the ritual and organisers denied any caste angle, but the episode has forced a fresh reckoning with everyday humiliation. If a leader of Kharge’s stature can be treated this way, the daily reality for ordinary Dalits and Adivasis, far from the cameras, is unlikely to be gentler.

There is also something revealing in how this movement frames its grievance. Affirmative action was designed to counter structural exclusion and indignity rather than individual disadvantage or poverty, but the two are being deliberately conflated.

Treating legal protection against caste-based violence, embodied in the Atrocities Act, as oppression of the general category requires ignoring why the legislation exists. Parliamentary data on the law’s persistently low conviction rates suggests that underenforcement – not misuse – remains the bigger problem.

The selective nature of the reform being sought is evident from the demand for a creamy layer test to exclude socially, educationally and economically advanced members of structurally disadvantaged groups, while insisting there be no discussion of extending reservation into the private sector – where most well paid jobs now sit.

This is a demand to shrink protections where disadvantaged groups have gained a toehold and shield the private economy, where their absence is starkest, from any scrutiny at all.

Of course, the reservation system is not beyond criticism. It needs reform, though of a very different kind than that being demanded at Jantar Mantar.

Government data shows that hundreds of thousands of reserved posts in central ministries and universities remain vacant year after year, filled at a fraction of the pace of general category posts. This points to administrative apathy rather than any excess of quota beneficiaries.

As privatisation deepens across industry and education, and as contractual and gig employment replace permanent public sector jobs, the domain where reservation applies keeps shrinking. This quietly makes the reservations policy less consequential each year rather than more burdensome.

The farce called Reservation Hatao Andolan will remind the Indian upper castes of a harsh truth about electoral democracy. They don’t have the numbers. All this while they’ve remained relevant due to their amplified sense of self worth. pic.twitter.com/CQ61Lf7l73

— Kaustubh Naik (@mundcar) August 25, 2026

The honest reform agenda would strengthen implementation, clear backlog vacancies and extend affirmative action into the private sector where it barely exists. More urgently, it would replace the imminent census’s open-ended self-reporting of caste with a standardised, coded list to avoid a repeat of the 2011 count’s unusable, duplicated data.

Weakening the Atrocities Act and capping entitlements for members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes with a creamy layer clause achieve none of this.

The Reservation Hatao Andolan movement wants to be seen as the natural sibling of the Cockroach Janata Party-inspired youth protests it constantly invokes. But a movement to dilute legal protections for historically dominant sections looks nothing like that fight, however similar its Instagram aesthetics or vocabulary of public anger.

It is the oldest instinct of entrenched privilege presented in the guise of reform. It is asking a still deeply stratified society to declare the matter closed on terms set by those who have rarely had to fight for a place at the table.

Genuine reform would mean filling reserved posts that lie vacant, extending protection to the private economy where caste hierarchy remains untouched and defending rather than diluting laws that make caste-based violence costly.

What this movement offers instead is the language of victimhood appropriated by those who never needed it – and deployed to protect a share of power that, evidence shows, they never lost.

Vishal R Choradiya is an assistant professor with the Department of Professional Studies, Christ University, Bengaluru.

The makers of Vimal Elaichi on Monday approached the Delhi High Court against show-cause notices issued by the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration to their brand ambassadors Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Tiger Shroff, Bar and Bench reported.

The petition sought directions to quash the notices issued to the actors on August 11 in connection with an advertisement for Vimal Elaichi mouth freshener, which the food and drug agency alleged amounted to surrogate promotion of Vimal Pan Masala, a product banned in the state.

The agency had asked the actors to provide documentary evidence showing that Vimal Elaichi is an independent product available for sale in the market. They had also been directed to immediately stop participating in or endorsing the advertisement and remove the promotional content from their social media accounts, websites and other digital platforms.

The court has reserved its verdict on whether the Delhi High Court has jurisdiction to hear the matter.

PB Agro, the manufacturer of Vimal Elaichi, argued that the food and drug agency’s notice was issued only to the actors and not to the company, even though the company would suffer “irreparable harm” from the action, Bar and Bench reported.

It also contended that the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration had no jurisdiction to direct that the advertisement be taken off air.

The company further argued that the allegation of surrogate advertising was baseless, pointing out that Vimal Pan Masala had neither been manufactured nor sold in Maharashtra since 2001, the legal news outlet reported. It added that the Supreme Court had imposed a nationwide ban on pan masala containing tobacco in 2013.

Maharashtra has prohibited gutka and pan masala containing tobacco or nicotine since 2012 under the Food Safety and Standards Act, with the ban renewed annually. The latest prohibition order was issued by the state food safety commissioner on July 13.

The counsel appearing for the Union government argued that the petition should have been filed before the Bombay High Court, as the matter concerned the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Allahabad High Court on Monday denied bail to an Islamic cleric who has been accused of inciting violence during a protest in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly in September 2025.

The protest was held against alleged atrocities and filing of allegedly false cases against Muslims by the state government.

The bench observed that Maulana Tauqeer Raza, the cleric accused in the matter, had called for the protest “admittedly to satisfy his religious and his private political interests”. The gathering had been organised without permission from the authorities, the court said.

The court made the observations on a plea filed by Raza seeking bail in the matter.

The bench said that while the applicant has claimed to have cancelled the gathering at a college ground after the administration denied permission for the protest, the demonstrators had marched to the venue.

The police personnel performing their duty to maintain law and order were allegedly manhandled by the crowd, the court said. The crowd “indulged in rioting, destruction of public property resulting in injuries to police personnel”, it said in its order.

The court said that while Raza was not present at the place of the incident, and was at the home of a co-accused, his speech after the violence thanking the crowd and “applauding their acts cannot also be approved of”, the bench said.

The court said that it “finds force” in the state’s submission that shouting the slogan “gustakh-e-nabi ki ek saza, sar tan se juda, sar tan se juda”, was a “challenge to the authority of law”, and the sovereignty and integrity of India. The slogan, which translates to “the only punishment for disrespecting the prophet is beheading”, had been allegedly shouted at the gathering.

The slogan incites people for an “arm (sic) rebellion which is punishable under the law”, the bench added.

It cannot be equated to other slogans such as “Nara-e-takbir, Allahu Akbar”, “Jo bole so nihal sat sri akal”, “Jai shri Ram” or “Har har Mahadev”, which are shouted to express respect for the god or guru.

The High Court had in December made similar observations while denying bail to a co-accused in the case.

The court had observed at the time that the “sar tan se juda” slogan incites people to an “armed rebellion” and is punishable under section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which pertains to acts that endanger India’s sovereignty, unity and integrity.

After the violence, the police had filed first information reports against 25 identified persons and 1,700 unidentified persons, Bar and Bench reported.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

A Manipuri musician died on Monday in Delhi after he was assaulted allegedly by a group of delivery workers and dhaba staffers when he objected to them shouting and drinking outside his apartment, PTI reported.

On Sunday night, Chongtham Vikram Singh had stepped out of his home in Kilokari village and asked the delivery workers not to make noise. His family said that the confrontation quickly became violent, and Singh was seriously injured, The Indian Express reported.

Singh’s son Yaiphaba took him to the Holy Family Hospital in Okhla, but he succumbed to his injuries early on Monday morning. The hospital stated that he died of haemorrhagic shock caused by blunt force trauma.

The police have arrested seven men and taken a minor into custody, PTI reported. The seven arrested men have been identified as Bharat Kumar, Pramod, Ramzan Khan, Deepanshu, Mohan Vishwakarma, Vijay and Mannu.

Delhi Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southeast) Vineet Kumar said that he and other senior officials met Singh’s family and other community members, and assured them that prompt and lawful action would be taken, The Indian Express reported.

Singh was the lead guitarist of Manipuri rock band Phoenix in the early 1980s, and was regarded as a pioneer for rock music in the state. He subsequently joined another band named Eastern Dark. Later, he shifted to Delhi, where he worked as a music teacher, the newspaper reported.

Vivek Sharma, the lead vocalist of Phoenix, described Singh as a “truly irreplaceable person, a dear friend and an elder brother”.

Commenting on Singh’s death, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi asked what the Union home ministry and the Delhi Police were doing to stop “this growing lawlessness”, especially against people from the Northeast.

“A father, killed outside his own home, in his own country’s capital,” Gandhi wrote in a social media post. “After many such incidents, every Northeast family in Delhi is asking the same question today - are we safe here?”

He demanded that the incident be investigated and those responsible be brought to justice.

Union Minister for Development of North Eastern Region Jyotiraditya Scindia also urged the Delhi Police to carry out a thorough investigation, and ensure that those responsible face the strictest legal consequences.

“The safety and dignity of every person from the Northeast is non-negotiable,” he said in a social media post.

Edited by Anamika Pathak.

The Calcutta High Court on Monday said that it may pass an order barring the registration of more first information reports against Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee without its permission, Live Law reported.

The bench made the observation after Banerjee’s counsel submitted that multiple criminal complaints were being filed against the TMC MP despite the interim protection he had been granted by courts.

The court was hearing Banerjee’s petition challenging criminal cases registered against him alleging irregularities at Sebaashray camps, including medical negligence and use of expired medicines. The camps were set up as part of a healthcare initiative by Banerjee in January 2025 when the TMC was in power in West Bengal.

“Enough is enough,” Bar and Bench quoted Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya as saying. “From May 2026 I am hearing these matters. I am telling you that now I am fed up. That I am going to pass an order directing not to register any FIR without the leave of this court.”

The court also questioned the basis of the complaints, asking how Banerjee could be linked to the allegations without an investigation establishing his alleged involvement.

It said that the police could proceed with their investigation and questioned the need for custodial interrogation, Live Law reported.

When the counsel appearing for the state argued that the case involved fake medicines and that the complainant was a whistleblower, the court questioned how the allegations were linked to Banerjee. “He has prescribed the medicine?” the court asked.

“Carry on your investigation, but no coercive steps at this stage,” it said. “I am not satisfied with the complaint.”

It asked: “Why was the whistle not blown one year back?”

The court further noted that the complainant had fought elections against Banerjee and lost twice.

The matter will next be heard on November 23.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to give a six-month extension to a committee it had constituted to submit a report on defining the Aravallis, The Indian Express reported.

Chief Justice Surya Kant questioned the panel’s request for time till February 28 to submit its conclusions, asking whether it was waiting for his retirement.

However, the bench comprising Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana allowed the committee to submit its report by November 30, two months after the August 31 deadline.

The committee, formed in May, was tasked with defining the Aravallis after the Supreme Court’s adoption of a definition by a Union environment ministry panel led to widespread protests, particularly in Rajasthan. The definition recognised only hills with an elevation of 100 metres or more as part of the Aravallis and was adopted by the court in November 2025.

The court stayed its decision in December amid concerns that the changed definition of the Aravallis could lead to unregulated mining and severe environmental degradation.

During the hearing on Monday, Kant said that the committee had “basically asked for an adjournment till my retirement”, Bar and Bench reported. His tenure will end on February 9.

“They should straightaway have said give date after my retirement,” The Indian Express quoted him as having remarked.

The chief justice told the committee to “work day and night”, and submit the report by the end of November.

No further extension would be granted, the court stated.

“If they are incapable, let them tell us; we will reconstitute the committee,” Kant was quoted as having told Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati, who was representing the panel.

The committee set up to conduct a survey and study of the Aravallis had on Friday told the court that the mountain range’s complex landscape cannot be defined using a single terrain or height-based criterion.

In the report submitted to the court, the committee said that it needed to carry out detailed mapping, field inspections, expert assessments and consultations with stakeholders before submitting its final recommendations.

“Defining the ancient, and in parts severely degraded, ranges that run between Gujarat and Delhi isn’t an easy task because the Aravallis lack uniformity,” the committee had stated.

The 700-km Aravalli mountain range stretches diagonally from southwest Gujarat, through Rajasthan, to Delhi and Haryana. Its highest point is Guru Shikhar in Mount Abu, which rises to an elevation of 1,722 metres.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Delhi High Court on Monday said that responsibility for the building collapse in the national capital extends beyond the owners of the building, holding the city’s municipal corporation and Delhi University accountable as well, The Indian Express reported.

Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya referred to the “very, very pathetic situation” of hostel availability, and verbally remarked that there needed to be a mechanism for regulating paying guest accommodations. The court said that the university had failed to provide adequate housing facilities for students from outside Delhi, forcing them to rely on private paying guest accommodation.

While hearing a public interest litigation seeking an independent investigation into the collapse of the five-storey building in Delhi’s Satya Niketan area, the court described the incident as “most unfortunate”, PTI reported.

The building, which was being used as paying guest accommodation for students, collapsed on Sunday afternoon, killing seven persons, including five students. The police said that as per inquiries, the structure was 40 to 50 years old, and repair work was underway in the basement when the building caved in.

A bench comprising Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia directed the Municipal Corporation of Delhi to examine the matter and find out whether the collapsed building had been constructed with the required permissions, The Indian Express reported.

“If it is found that it was without valid permission, the MCD shall fix the responsibility of the officer concerned for such lapse,” it said.

The court further directed the civic body to inspect all buildings being used as paying guest accommodations and hostels, and to submit a report within a week on whether they had the required permissions and complied with building rules, the newspaper reported.

“Please impress upon the government for providing the facility of a hostel to the students,” Upadhyaya told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Union and Delhi governments. “PGs are not only very dangerous, they pose a threat to life and security of students.”

The bench directed the Delhi government, the municipal corporation, Delhi University as well as the police to file their replies within 10 days. The matter will be heard further on September 25.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Allahabad High Court has said that the Gautam Buddha Nagar district magistrate’s conduct in detaining a 25-year-old Delhi University graduate under the National Security Act after the workers’ protest in Noida “is worthy of derision”.

The Act allows for long periods of detention without trial up to a year.

Quashing the preventive detention of Akriti Chaudhary on Wednesday, the High Court said District Magistrate Medha Roopam was “guilty of violating her oath of allegiance”.

Chaudhary has been in jail for nearly five months. She was detained on April 11 during the workers’ protest in Noida. A month later, the National Security Act was invoked against her.

Despite her detention under the Act being quashed, she remains in jail because she has been named in several first information reports in connection with the protest.

The police had claimed that Chaudhary and 60-year-old Satya Verma, a journalist from Lucknow, were “significant in instigating violence, arson and creating chaos” during the protest. It also claimed that Verma and Chaudhary “provoked” persons in different areas to “disturb public order”.

In its 15-page order on Wednesday, the High Court said that the district magistrate had detained Chaudhary only to “set an example out of the petitioner and deter others from exercising their right to freedom of speech and expression in public spaces in support of the labourers”.

It also warned that soon, the “errant in the bureaucracy [will] reduce the state of Uttar Pradesh to an Orwellian Dystopia”.

A bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdev said that the detention order against Chaudhary was devoid of material evidence and was passed “without application of mind”.

It also noted that Chaudhary “though not initially named in the FIR as an accused, has also been inserted as an accused subsequently”.

Although Chaudhary’s counsel had demanded compensation of Rs 50 lakh, the bench directed the authorities to pay Rs 5 lakh to her. This should be deducted from the salary of Roopam, who passed the detention order, as well as other officials responsible for enforcing it.

The judges also underlined that bureaucrats must realise that their “loyalty is towards the Constitution and not the political executive”.

Every time the bureaucrats failed to serve the citizens, they would be viewed as “an oppressive vestige of the British Empire arousing angst and hatred”, said the court.

It also highlighted that the state government has not been able to show a single message from the WhatsApp chats between Chaudhary and her associates or any video clip which “would reveal any incitement”, despite repeatedly being asked to do so.

On April 13, about 40,000 to 45,000 workers from several industrial units had gathered in parts of the city to press long-standing demands that their salaries be increased. The protests came amid increasing gas prices because of the supply disruption caused by the war in West Asia.

The demonstration had turned violent, with videos widely shared on social media showing some protesters throwing stones and vandalising property.

On April 14, more than 350 persons had been arrested in connection with the violence.

Detaining Chaudhary and Verma a month later, the Uttar Pradesh Police alleged that the two of them “provoked” persons in different areas to “disturb public order”.

Verma and Chaudhary are members of the Mazdoor Bigul Dasta, a workers’ organisation.

Chaudhary’s family had claimed that she had been picked up by the police from a metro station in Noida on April 11. Her father, Arun Chaudhary, had asked how a person who had been picked up on April 11 could be charged with violence that took place on April 13.

Violence during protests

Witnesses had alleged that the police personnel deployed to contain the violence on April 13 had beaten up the protesters.

On April 16, a video surfaced online showing police personnel assaulting women. The video was shared on social media platforms by several users, including the Uttar Pradesh Congress, who alleged that it showed police personnel in Noida lathi-charging and manhandling women workers on the day of wage hike protests.

The police commissionerate in Gautam Buddha Nagar district denied this. It said that “prima facie, the video appears to be morphed or AI-generated and does not seem to be from Noida, but rather from some other location.”

However, eyewitnesses, who did not want to be identified because of the fear of facing backlash from the authorities, told Scroll that the video accurately captured the scene they had witnessed.

Scroll also used geolocation analysis and matched the video against a press photo to establish that the location was indeed Block A and Block B of Noida’s Sector 6. Scroll visited the spot and spoke to several people who had seen the police assault. Questions sent to Commissioner of Police Laxmi Singh at the time did not receive a response.

Inputs by Anant Gupta. Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• Noida and beyond: India’s workers are being shortchanged. They deserve a fair deal

• Fact check: Despite official denial, viral video showing police beating women workers is from Noida

Dhirendra Shastri, the head of the Bageshwar Dham temple, on Sunday said that Hindus must avoid eating non-vegetarian food during the Durga Puja festival and at pandals in West Bengal. The Trinamool Congress said that Bengalis “will not let go” if somebody tries to dictate what they eat or celebrate their festival.

Speaking at an event in Kolkata, Shastri said he does not like it when “dirty” non-vegetarian food is eaten during Durga Puja and at gatherings linked to the festivities.

“I want the Hindus of Kolkata to awaken and boycott such people,” he said. “…[These people] cannot be considered religious.”

Meat must not be sold near the goddess’ idol during the festival, he added.

The festival will begin on October 6 and conclude on October 10 this year.

Eating meat during Durga Puja is common among Bengali Hindus and animal sacrifice is an important ritual for some in the community.

The Opposition Trinamool Congress said that Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari had welcomed Shastri in the state. Adhikari had met the religious leader on Friday.

The party claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party “wants to snatch fish and meat from the plates of Bengalis”. “For this purpose, raids are being conducted in all restaurants before the puja,” the TMC said on social media.

Former TMC spokesperson Riju Dutta said that Durga Puja “is an emotion” to Bengalis and celebrating the festival “in our own way is our culture, identity and history”.

“It is bigger than any person, party or politics,” Dutta said on social media. “If anyone, any party or any group tries to dictate Bengalis how to celebrate their mother or interfere in our rituals, customs or traditions – then they playing with fire!”

BJP leader Tathagata Roy on Monday said that “the pig-headed stupidity of desperate Hindu-baiters is interesting”. The former Meghalaya governor said that he does not agree with Shastri and that he eats non-vegetarian food during Navaratri and that he “remains 100% Hindu”.

“There is no concept of ‘Munafiq’ (half-believers) in Hindutva,” Roy said. “This diversity is the essence of Hindutva. I may have respect for Dhirendra Brahmachari, but what he said is no firman (Hindus don’t issue firmans); and I allow neither Dhirendra Brahmachari Manu-Samhita nor Quran-Haadith to control my life.”

A firman is a decree issued by a ruler in a historical Islamic state.

Shastri’s comments also sparked criticism on social media, with one user saying that a person from outside the state was “judging Bengalis and their food habits”.

On Tuesday, the BJP said that “what one eats or wears is a personal choice”.

“Bengal’s food culture is diverse, and everyone has the freedom to follow their own preferences,” said the party’s West Bengal unit chief Samik Bhattacharya. “Bengalis won’t have fish or mutton? Even Swami Vivekananda approved of it. No saint, leader or anyone else has the right to decide what you should eat.”

What one eats or wears is a personal choice. Bengal’s food culture is diverse, and everyone has the freedom to follow their own preferences.

Bengalis won’t have fish or mutton? Even Swami Vivekananda approved of it. No saint, leader or anyone else has the right to decide what… pic.twitter.com/29fHCiLnXB

— BJP West Bengal (@BJP4Bengal) September 7, 2026

Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said that eating meat “is core to Shakta Hinduism”.

Shakta Hinduism is a Hindu denomination in which god is revered as feminine.

Sanyal said that meat is offered to deities Durga and Kali “as part of the ancient rituals”. “Any interference in this sacred ritual will not be tolerated,” he added.

On August 26, the Vishva Hindu Parishad urged Durga Puja organisers in the state to follow “traditional” religious practices, including keeping meat outside the pandals.

It clarified that it was not asking for organisers to adopt an exclusively vegetarian approach, but suggested that “non-vegetarian” food stalls be kept in designated areas outside pandals. The organisation warned that it could “intervene” if committees do not comply with its suggestions.

The Vishva Hindu Parishad is a part of a group of Hindutva organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the BJP.

The Durga Puja in Kolkata was added in 2021 to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• Meet the rationalist who took on the high-flying Bageshwar Dham priest
• The illogic of meat bans

The Congress on Monday claimed that the Monsoon Session of Parliament had not been formally closed despite 25 days having passed since its adjournment because the Union government was “scrambling around” to find a majority for the delimitation bill.

The process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies is called delimitation.

In a social media post, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said that “normally, prorogation takes place three to four days” after a Parliament session is adjourned sine die.

However, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah had kept the Monsoon Session “on ventilator”, claimed Ramesh.

“How much longer before he accepts the reality that his politics of threats and intimidation has reached its limit?” asked the Rajya Sabha MP.

Today is exactly 25 days since Parliament was adjourned sine die. But it has still NOT been prorogued.

Normally prorogation takes place 3-4 days after adjournment sine die. But the gap for the Monsoon Session in 2015 was 28 days. That session had been washed out almost entirely… pic.twitter.com/PqwjWVhMeI

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) September 7, 2026

During a three-day special session of Parliament in April, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government introduced the 2026 Constitution 131st Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha to amend the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act and redraw the boundaries of electoral constituencies.

The bill, one of the three draft legislations that were introduced, required a two-thirds majority of votes in Parliament to pass. The ruling National Democratic Alliance does not have a two-thirds majority of MPs in any House. Therefore, it required the support of Opposition parties to pass the amendment.

The consideration of the bill was rejected by the Lok Sabha with 298 MPs voting in its favour and 230 against.

Before the Monsoon Session of Parliament began on July 20, Union minister Ramdas Athawale was quoted as saying by PTI that the delimitation bill would be passed in the House.

However, amid a deadlock in Parliament about the police using excessive force against youth protesters in Delhi, the bill was not listed.

On Monday, Ramesh said that the Monsoon Session in 2015 had been “washed out” because of a controversy around former Indian Premier League chairperson Lalit Modi, but was still kept alive because the government wanted to “bulldoze the goods and security tax bill”.

“As it turned out the Modi government was forced to consult more meaningfully with the Opposition and pass the bills much later,” he added.

Edited by Sneha.

The toll in the building collapse in Delhi’s Satya Niketan area rose to seven, even as search and rescue operations continued. Eleven persons have been rescued so far but 30 to 35 students are estimated to be trapped under the rubble.

The five-storey building, which was being used as paying guest accommodation for students, collapsed on Sunday afternoon. The police said that the structure was 40 to 50 years old. Repair work had been underway in the basement when the building caved in.

The owner of the building was arrested in Bhiwadi in Rajasthan. A case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and negligence has been registered against him. Five municipal officials have been suspended. Read on.

The Delhi High Court summoned journalist Sudhir Chaudhary and public broadcaster Doordarshan News in a defamation case filed by a civil services aspirant who had attended the youth protests at Jantar Mantar in July. Vikram Sherawat, a volunteer with the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign, alleged that Chaudhary had described him as an “anti-national” in a show on July 27.

He alleged that Chaudhary had accused him of calling for the destruction of Parliament and creating a “Nepal-like situation” in India.

Sherawat has sought Rs 5 crore in damages from Chaudhary, his production company Essprit Productions and Doordarshan News. Read on.

The Supreme Court directed the Ghaziabad police commissioner to file an affidavit explaining what information it had sought from social media platform X about journalist Abhishek Upadhyay. He has claimed that a road-rage case was filed to harass him after he reported on the alleged embezzlement of donations at the Ram temple in Ayodhya.

In a petition against the first information report against him, Upadhyay has filed an application challenging a notice the Uttar Pradesh Police had issued to X seeking information about his social media account.

The counsel for Upadhyay has contended that the police were trying to find the identity of Upadhyay’s journalistic sources. In response, the bench asked why a person’s “digital footsteps” were needed in a road rage case. Read on.

A Delhi court rejected YouTuber Ajeet Bharti’s petition seeking anticipatory bail in a case pertaining to his allegedly derogatory and casteist remarks about Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) MP Chandra Shekhar Aazad. The plea was not maintainable, held the bench.

The Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) has alleged Bharti made “caste-based, abusive, humiliating, sexually degrading and potentially inflammatory statements” about the Nagina MP and BR Ambedkar in a video where he spoke about the anti-reservation protests held at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in August. Read on.

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A Delhi court on Monday rejected YouTuber Ajeet Bharti’s petition seeking anticipatory bail in a case pertaining to his allegedly derogatory and casteist remarks about Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) MP Chandra Shekhar Aazad, Bar and Bench reported.

Aazad is the president of the party and the chief of the Dalit rights organisation Bhim Army.

The first information report against Bharti was filed based on a complaint by the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) on August 23.

The party alleged Bharti made “caste-based, abusive, humiliating, sexually degrading and potentially inflammatory statements” about the Nagina MP and about BR Ambedkar in a video where he spoke about the anti-reservation protests held at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar in August.

On Monday, Additional Sessions Judge Saurabh Pratap Singh Laler held that Bharti’s plea for anticipatory bail was not maintainable, reported Bar and Bench.

There should be no apprehension of arrest only because a case had been registered, the judge further said.

Bharti has been booked under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, the Information Technology Act and provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to promoting enmity between groups, and criminal intimidation.

The YouTuber has claimed that he had made the comments in response to abusive social media posts targeting his sister. He denied using casteist slurs about Aazad, and claimed that the first information report was filed due to pressure from the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram).

“My remarks were made as a reaction because somebody said my married sister should marry someone,” Bharti’s counsel, Jai Anant Dehadrai, told the court. “This was a grave provocation.”

On August 21, thousands joined a protest at Jantar Mantar to demand that quotas in educational institutions and government jobs should be based on economic criteria rather than caste. Several persons were detained and removed from the site by the police.

Though the police had given permission for the event to be held at Ramlila Maidan, protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar in the heart of the capital.

Edited by Sneha.

The Delhi High Court on Monday summoned journalist Sudhir Chaudhary and public broadcaster Doordarshan News in a defamation case filed by a 28-year-old civil services aspirant who had attended the youth protests at Jantar Mantar in July, reported Bar and Bench.

Vikram Sherawat, a volunteer with the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign, alleged in his plea that in a July 27 broadcast, Chaudhary accused him of calling for the destruction of Parliament and creating a “Nepal-like situation” in India.

Sherawat alleged that Chaudhary had described him as an “anti-national”.

“It was a mala fide act, meant to discredit a critic of the government, to paint a peaceful protest as anti-national, and to expose the plaintiff to public hatred and to danger,” read his petition.

Sherawat has sought Rs 5 crore in damages from Chaudhary, his production company Essprit Productions and Doordarshan News.

The 28-year-old had been part of the protests against alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations, which began on June 6. The Cockroach Janta Party had held a demonstration on the day at Jantar Mantar demanding the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time.

On July 20, thousands joined the protest. This came two days after the police forcibly took activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been on a hunger strike for three weeks, to hospital.

The protesters’ march to Parliament was met with a crackdown by police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis and fired tear gas shells and pellet guns at the demonstrators. The police action turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country. Pradhan resigned as the education minister on July 25.

In his petition, Sherawat said the alleged statement was made by an unidentified person at a different event. However, Chaudhary wrongly claimed that he had made it during the demonstration on July 20, he said.

He has accused Chaudhary of not verifying any information before the broadcast. Further, Sherawat said that Chaudhary had broadcast a low-quality version of the footage so that the two men featured in it could not be distinguished.

Hearing the case, Justice Subramonium Prasad on Monday issued notice to stop the national broadcaster from publishing and republishing the allegations against Sherawat.

The court said the plea will be considered on September 22.

Edited by Sneha.

The Vishva Hindu Parishad has called for a ban on Muslims from taking part in garba events in Maharashtra and set “guidelines” for the organisers to verify the identity of participants, India Today reported on Sunday.

The measures include checking the Aadhaar cards of those participating and applying a tilak, a sacred mark on the forehead in Hindu tradition, on the participants.

VHP spokesperson Shriraj Nair said that the Hindutva group had decided to prevent Muslims from participating in garba events, arguing that the festival is centred on worshipping a Hindu deity, India Today reported.

Garba is a Gujarati folk dance, performed in a circular pattern around a lamp or idol, symbolising the Hindu deity Durga. It is performed during the festival of Navratri, which will begin on October 11 and end on October 20 this year.

“Navratri is not just about songs and dance,” Nair was quoted as saying. “The festival is about worshipping the goddess. Why should Muslims, who are against idol worship, participate in the festival?”

Hindutva groups have long tried to make the identity verification of those participating in garba and dandiya events mandatory to prevent “love jihad”.

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

However, Nair claimed that the decision was not directed against any community, but was a precautionary measure to preserve what the organisation considers the cultural character of Hindu festivals.

The Vishva Hindu Parishad is part of a group of Hindutva outfits led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut criticised the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s demands, saying that Muslims “also made a significant contribution to this country’s freedom struggle and cultural struggle”, ANI reported.

“[RSS chief] Mohan Bhagwat goes abroad and delivers speeches stating that ‘there should be no differences between Muslims and Hindus in our country’...” Raut was quoted as saying. “Yet here, his people engage in this kind of behaviour? Mohan Bhagwat ought to issue a statement on this.”

Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) spokesperson Clyde Crasto said that the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s actions were bound to disturb peace, The Times of India reported.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Thousands of Pune residents on Sunday held a march to the headquarters of the municipal corporation to demand a ban on high-decibel sound systems during religious festivals and stricter action against noise pollution, The Indian Express reported.

The march, organised by the Loudspeaker-Virodhi Punekar Manch, was the third agitation in a week. The first two protests were held on August 30.

The citizens’ protests on Sunday came two days after activist Vidyanand Bapat was on Friday assaulted by a person who reportedly organises Ganeshotsav festivities, for his protests against noise pollution in the city. Bapat, a Pune resident, has been campaigning against the use of loudspeakers and disk jockeys, including during the Ganeshotsav festivities that start on September 14 this year.

The first information report has been registered against the attacker, who was arrested on Friday.

Bapat did not participate in the march on Sunday, saying that the campaign must focus on the cause and should not become a movement in his support following the assault, the Hindustan Times reported.

The protesters on Sunday said that their demand to ban DJs and loudspeakers was not linked to any particular festival or community, but was against the excessive and unauthorised noise at all public events, the newspaper reported.

In a representation submitted to the police, the group of citizens demanded that the police, the municipal body and the state pollution control board must inspect venues and sound systems being used before the events begin, and seize equipment that would lead to the noise exceeding permissible limits.

The protesters also demanded greater transparency in how the noise levels are monitored and enforcement across religious, political and social events in the city.

Deputy Police Commissioner Krishikesh Rawale told the Hindustan Times that the police was following guidelines issued by the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal, and had filed cases against violations during the Hindu festival Dahi Handi and Eid-e-Milad, a Muslim celebration.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Ghaziabad police commissioner to file an affidavit explaining what information it had sought from social media platform X in connection with a road rage case against journalist Abhishek Upadhyay, Live Law reported.

Upadhyay has claimed that the road-rage case was filed to harass him for his reports on the alleged embezzlement of donations at the Ram temple in Ayodhya. He was among the first to report on the alleged corruption.

In a petition against the first information report against him, Upadhyay has filed an application challenging a notice the Uttar Pradesh Police had issued to X seeking information about his social media account.

During the hearing on Monday, the counsel for Upadhyay contended that the police’s notice had sought information about the account dating back to June 1, even as the FIR in the road-rage case had been filed on August 18, reported Live Law.

The police had also sought details about which devices had been used to log in to the account.

The lawyer contended that the police were trying to find Upadhyay’s journalistic sources.

The attorney general representing the Uttar Pradesh government said that there was a medico-legal case report showing injuries that needed to be investigated.

In response, Justice Joymalya Bagchi asked why a person’s “digital footsteps” were needed in a road rage case.

The FIR against Upadhyay, based on a complaint by a two-wheeler rider, alleged that the journalist hit his vehicle from behind and then threatened and abused him. It invoked provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act.

On August 25, the Supreme Court granted Upadhyay protection from arrest in the case.

During the hearing, the journalist had claimed that the road-rage allegations were baseless and that the security camera footage from the site would prove this. He also sought preservation of the footage from the area.

Chief Justice Surya Kant, while granting Upadhyay protection from arrest, verbally remarked that while the court did not know the truth of the matter, it could understand the journalist’s apprehension.

Edited by Sneha.

The toll in the building collapse in Delhi’s Satya Niketan area rose to seven on Monday, with search and rescue operations continuing at the spot, ANI reported.

Teams from the National Disaster Response Force, fire services, the police and other agencies were working to clear the debris and search for survivors.

Eleven persons have been rescued so far, and 30 to 35 students are estimated to be trapped under the rubble, India Today reported.

The five-storey building, which was being used as paying guest accommodation for students, collapsed on Sunday afternoon. The police said that as per inquiries, the structure was 40 to 50 years old, and repair work was underway in the basement when the building caved in.

Municipal Corporation of Delhi Commissioner Sanjeev Khirwar said that the building had never been given a notice or sealed, ANI reported.

Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, who visited the site on Sunday evening, ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident, The Hindu reported. She asserted that whoever is responsible for the collapse will not be spared, be it the owner of the building or a government official.

“The building was old, and some construction and renovation work was underway,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “Our priority is to save the lives of these children first. All officials are present here, and there will be no shortage of any kind. However, the guilty will not be spared.”

The owner of the building was arrested in Rajasthan’s Bhiwadi on Monday, ANI reported. A case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and negligence has been registered against him.

Five municipal officials were also suspended, reported the news agency.

Early on Monday, fresh security footage emerged from the site, showing a man who was sitting nearby running for his life as the building came crashing down.

#WATCH | Delhi: CCTV footage from the building collapse site in Satya Niketan of Delhi's South-West district. Six people have lost their lives.

(Source: Local Resident) pic.twitter.com/7MtDbb3pJF

— ANI (@ANI) September 7, 2026

The collapse on Sunday sparked criticism from Opposition leaders about the living conditions of university students who struggle to find affordable accommodation.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi remarked: “Students' lives were already filled with struggles – now the situation is life-threatening. Due to the lack of good hostels in colleges or universities, students are forced to live in PG [paying guest] accommodation, with as many as 40 students staying under the same roof, and being forced to live in inhuman conditions.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Singapore must never allow prejudice against any community to become normalised, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on Sunday about online abuse targeting persons of Indian origin in the country.

The comments came a day after Singaporean Home Minister K Shanmugam said that the police were investigating “nasty and racist” posts online about the Nepal-China flash flood and Singapore Airlines’ investment in Air India.

Shanmugam said that the comments had been directed at Singaporeans of Indian ethnicity, including the chief executive officer of the state-owned investment firm Temasek, and Indians in general.

On Sunday, Wong said that “an uglier side” had emerged in online discussions about the two matters.

The allegedly racist comments on social media were relating to some of the Singaporeans missing in the disaster in Nepal, Wong said. Some posts questioning the Singaporean national airline’s 25% stake in Air India had been “accompanied by anti-Indian abuse”, he said.

“We can and should have robust debates,” Wong said on social media. “But we should never use seemingly legitimate arguments as a cover to fuel prejudice against any community or hostility towards foreigners.”

Wong said that while the comments made in the posts do not represent Singapore, they cannot be dismissed as harmless online chatter. “If such behaviour goes unchecked, it can become normalised, deepen mistrust between communities, and pull us apart,” he said.

The prime minister said that anti-foreigner and racial sentiments had been “stirred up” during the Covid-19 pandemic, during the debates about the Singapore-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement and the 2025 general election in the island nation.

“There will always be people who seek to exploit our differences,” Wong said. “We cannot stop every hateful comment from appearing online. But how we respond is up to us. We can reject such views, and refuse to give them more space or legitimacy.”

Wong’s comments came three months after the Singaporean government on June 6 ordered social media platforms to block 14 posts that targeted the Indian community. The posts had made claims such as that the island nation was being overrun by Indians.

The Singaporean home ministry had said at the time that the content “likely originated from a China-based platform” and was carried by other websites.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Eleven persons died over two days due to spurious liquor poisoning in Madhya Pradesh’s Sagar district, PTI reported on Sunday.

Another 80 persons from four to five villages in the Banda tehsil of the district fell ill and were admitted to hospitals, The New Indian Express reported. One critically ill patient was airlifted from the medical college in Sagar to Bhopal.

The first death was reported at Banda Civil Hospital on Saturday night, while the other fatalities began taking place from early Sunday morning, the newspaper reported. Those who died hailed from six villages – Ghooghra Khurd, Nauraj, Bamoora, Patan, Chauka and Dalpatpur.

Three cases have been registered based on the complaints of the victims, PTI quoted Sagar Range Deputy Inspector General of Police Shashindra Chouhan as saying. Two police officials – the Banda Police station house officer and an outpost in-charge – have been suspended, Chouhan said.

During the investigation, a link emerged between some persons in Uttar Pradesh’s Lalitpur and a local liquor outlet owner, the deputy inspector general was quoted as saying by the news agency.

Sagar Collector Pratibha Pal also said initial inquiries indicated that the liquor had come from Lalitpur.

“There is a gang in Lalitpur that supplies this kind of poisonous liquor,” PTI quoted the collector as saying. “Since this area is adjacent to Uttar Pradesh, this has come to light in the preliminary investigation. The matter is being investigated.”

Apart from the two police officials, Sagar Assistant Excise Commissioner Kirti Dubey, Additional District Excise Officer Dilip Kandaka and Sub-Inspector Roshani Urathi were also suspended, Madhya Pradesh Excise Commissioner Deepak Saxena said.

Further, Area Deputy Commissioner Neerja Shrivastava has been transferred out of Sagar and attached to the department’s headquarters in Gwalior.

Saxena was quoted as saying by PTI that the packaging of the liquor looked original, like that of locally made brands. “The agent of the licensed liquor seller sold it and people thought it was genuine,” he said.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

When Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat arrived in Britain on September 3 on the last leg of an international tour that had started in the US on August 25 and also taken him to Canada, no exact schedule had been made public.

Despite not having any confirmation of his movements, protesters gathered outside Parliament Square in London on Sunday, the day before Bhagwat’s visit was expected to conclude.

With the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben serving as a symbolic backdrop, the demonstrators aimed to send two messages: that they rejected the Hindu majoritarianism of the RSS and were rebuking the UK for its official silence on the visit.

Participants from an array of campaign organisations, diaspora groups, students and academics assembled through the afternoon, Palestine flags mixed in with placards reading, “Never Forget Gujarat Genocide, 2002”, “Diaspora united against fascism” and “Inquilab Zindabad” – long live the revolution. Another sign addressed UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham: “Will you ban RSS?”

WATCH:"The #RSS is running scared.Not only bcos of protests in NY & here but bcos of the incredibly inspiring resistance in India. Building on Shaheen Bagh & the farmers movement, the students are out on the streets in their 1000s saying Enough is Enough! We stand with them!" pic.twitter.com/1iZhDHH4DK

— SouthAsia Solidarity (@SAsiaSolidarity) September 6, 2026

Among the participants was a high school teacher who said that the diaspora needed to show up at protests such as this one because the RSS’s politics enables repression in India. As evidence, she pointed to the case of Swatantra Bhardwaj, the Hindutva influencer whose interview went viral on social media last week for boasting that he had assaulted the father of a student activist.

The teacher claimed that Bhagwat’s ability to travel to the West and “get millions and billions from his crony capitalists friends to fund their repression back in India” made visible opposition all the more necessary.

One speaker framed the demonstration more broadly, telling the crowd simply that they were there to protest against “the ideology of ethnonationalism”.

Rajiv Sinha, director of an organisation called Hindus for Human Rights UK, claimed that the RSS had become progressively more “scared” as Bhagwat’s tour had folded.

“In the US, they did their flagship event on a Saturday before he left the country, at Madison Square Garden in New York,” he said. “They faced a lot of opposition, and they had to lie about who they are and what their politics and ideology are to get meetings. What have we heard from them over here? Not very much.”

When Bhagwat arrived in New York, a United States panel on religious freedom had urged the Donald Trump administration to revoke his visa and “make him ineligible” to enter the country in the future.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom said that it was “deeply concerned” about Bhagwat’s visit and alleged that groups associated with the RSS “have perpetrated violent attacks against religious minorities, including Christians, Dalits, Muslims, and Sikhs” in recent years.

“Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has enforced policies that closely align with the RSS’ Hindutva ideology, inherently discriminating against religious minority communities,” it added.

After Bhagwat addressed about 5,000 Hindu Americans and Hindu non-resident Indians in New York’s Madison Square Garden at an event titled “One World One Humanity” on August 29, two religious leaders who had appeared alongside him said that the organisers had not told them that the Hindutva leader would also be taking part.

Adriene Thorne, a minister of the Riverside Church, claimed that she had been “duped” into participating in the event.

Another religious leader, Shamsi Ali described his attendance as a “serious error in judgement”.

The New York event attracted several protestors outside the venue.

Human rights activists in New York City right now are taking to the streets to protest the visit of Mohan Bhagwat, the leader of the RSS, a right wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization.

@NYCMayor Mamdani has come out against the visit, saying that the RSS does not… pic.twitter.com/EfYuwKIe7S

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) August 29, 2026

Before Bhagwat arrived in Canada on August 31, two MPs on Friday urged the country’s government to ban the RSS and prevent its chief from visiting the country, claiming that his presence in Canada could “lead to social disorder”.

Separately, more than 40 Canadian civil society and faith-based organisations also called on the country’s Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree not to allow Bhagwat to enter Canada.

As a consequence of incidents like this, by the time the tour reached Britain, Bhagwat’s schedule had not been disclosed at all, Hindus for Human Rights UK director Sinha claimed.

“They are hiding because they’re scared, and they should be,” he told the crowd. “They know that we will show up, united, as we have done today.”

The location of the London protest, directly in front of Parliament, was intended to be a statement about British officials who have so far avoided taking a clear position on Bhagwat’s visit, organisers said.

Last week, Labour MP Nadia Whittome received a response to her written parliamentary question asking whether the government had assessed the visit under the Home Office’s unacceptable behaviours policy.

Without addressing Bhagwat’s presence directly. UK security minister Dan Jarvis said the department could not comment on individual cases but was committed to tackling “the full range of threats” and holding accountable anyone who “spreads views that promote violence and hatred”.

London mayor Sadiq Khan had made not made public statement after being asked by Hindus for Human Rights UK to confirm that no council venue or funds would go toward the visit. Separately, a coalition of more than 20 diaspora organisations had asked him to refuse any venues owned by the Greater London Authority for events by the RSS and to clarify what safety measures the Metropolitan Police had instituted around Bhagwat’s visit.

Among those distributing literature at the protest was an organisation called Spartacist League. Its pamphlet argued that opposition to the tour by the RSS chief “cannot remain a purely Indian or South Asian affair” because of the parallel rise of rightwing movements internationally.

“We need the broadest possible united front to confront and shut down Bhagwat’s visit,” it stated.

Vaishnavi Manju Pal is a London-based researcher and lecturer specialising in caste and gender, with an MA in Gender Studies from SOAS, University of London.

The Gauhati High Court has directed the Assam government to pay Rs 2 lakh as compensation to a Bengali-origin Muslim woman for expelling her to Bangladesh.

This is the first time any court has imposed a cost on the state for forcing out a person to Bangladesh, in violation of deportation rules.

As Scroll had reported, Mumtaz Begum’s family realised she had been forced out of the country when they filed a habeas corpus petition in the Gauhati High Court.

The High Court impleaded the Ministry of External Affairs in the case and said it would direct it to “make an endeavour to have the woman located in Bangladesh and to expatriate her to India”.

The court also came down heavily on the Nagaon foreigners tribunal for its role in Begum’s expulsion.

Acting on the habeas corpus petition, the bench of Justice Kalyan Rai Surana and Justice Susmita Phukan Khaund said the court is satisfied from the nature of action taken by the foreigners tribunal that “the element of malice in law on part of the learned tribunal is apparent on the face of record.”

Foreigners tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies unique to Assam that decide on matters of nationality on the basis of documentary evidence.

The Nagaon tribunal had declared Begum a foreigner in 2019, saying she could not prove that she was her father’s daughter.

However, the Gauhati High Court had asked the tribunal to reconsider the case of the Bengali-origin Muslim woman, arguing that it had not considered all the evidence that she had submitted while deciding her case.

On May 30, Begum approached the tribunal on instructions of the High Court. However, as Scroll reported, the tribunal judge, instead of taking another look at the case, ordered Begum’s arrest.

Within minutes, she was arrested from the premises. Her lawyers alleged that she was not even given a copy of the order, which could have allowed her to appeal the tribunal decision.

Assam’s tribunals have stripped about 1,30,000 people of Indian citizenship in the last four years. The process has often been criticised by higher courts as arbitrary and loaded against the poor and marginalised.

Gauhati HC remands back a Muslim woman's case to foreigners tribunal for fresh hearing.

As soon as she appeared before
the tribunal and submitted the HC judgement, she was arrested within minutes

Two weeks later, she was forced into Bangladesh @scroll_inhttps://t.co/U5HJqaYopJ

— Rokibuz Zaman (@ZamanRokibuz_) July 17, 2026

A citizenship trial

Begum was declared a D or doubtful voter in 1997 after a revision of electoral rolls in the state. Three lakh voters were disenfranchised in the process.

Many of them, like Begum, were referred by the Assam’s border police to the foreigners tribunals.

Begum’s journey through Assam’s citizenship determination system has been nerve-wracking.

In 2017, the Nagaon foreigners tribunal ruled that she was not a citizen. But a challenge in the Gauhati High Court led to a retrial.

Begum went back to the tribunal, but this time she was declared a foreigner.

In 2019, she challenged the order in the Gauhati High Court again. This was when the court pointed out that the tribunal had not examined all the evidence she had submitted and asked it for a fresh opinion.

But on May 30, the tribunal again declared Begum a foreigner without discussing the merits of the documents she had submitted.

The High Court criticized the tribunal’s action, saying that the judge, Bipul Kumar Nath, “had taken a personal grudge on the matter being remanded back for a fresh opinion.”

The court said that Begum was not given a chance to challenge the May 30 order, which is a “direct violation” of the standard operating procedure under the Immigrants (Expulsion from Assam) Act, 1950. The act says that a person can be expelled only if she has exhausted her legal remedies available.

“Date and time of opinion”

The court also directed Assam’s Home and Political Department, which administers the Foreigners Tribunals, to inquire into the date and time of the tribunal order on May 30.

If necessary, the government was directed to seize the tribunal member’s computer to find out when the judge had written the opinion.

Begum’s family had alleged that on May 30, Begum had appeared before the tribunal at 12.30 pm. Half an hour later, she had been arrested by personnel from the Juria police station. The tribunal judge denied this.

The Nagaon superintendent of police, too, told the court that the border police had arrested her from near the tribunal premises around 2 pm.

However, the court questioned the version of the police and the judge. “Had the learned tribunal informed [Begum] even verbally that she was declared to be a foreigner, there would have been no reason for her to be in the campus of the learned Tribunal and/or in its vicinity between 1.30 pm and 2 pm, so as to be available for the police personnel to take her into custody,” the court said.

The court said that the tribunal judge “deliberately and wilfully delayed” issuing his order so that Begum could be arrested and removed from Nagaon district to the Matia detention centre and then out of the country.

Therefore, the high court held that “the state machinery, acting in tandem, had prevented” Begum from “exhausting her right to move this court” by way of a writ petition to challenge the May 30 judgement.

The court said as she “was expelled out of India without providing any information to the petitioner or any adult family member of the detention of the detenue, as an interim palliative measure, the court is inclined to direct the Government of Assam to pay an interim compensation of Rs 2 lakh to the petitioner.”

The division bench referred to the Supreme Court judgment which held that the life and liberty of an individual is so sacrosanct that it cannot be allowed to be interfered with except under the authority of law.

“This principle is recognised and applied in all civilised countries,” the high court bench said. “Under our Constitution, Article 21 guarantees the protection of life and personal liberty not only to citizens of India but also to aliens.”

The court also directed the superintendent of police of every district of the state to ensure that before taking “a declared foreign national into custody, he or she shall be informed about the judgement passed against him or her by the foreigners tribunal”.

“Before such declared foreign nationals are shifted outside the jurisdiction of the [district police] … the adult family member of the declared foreign national should be informed that the detenue is being removed from their jurisdiction,” it said.

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

“Declared foreigners” are typically long-term residents with families and properties in Assam, who have failed to prove their citizenship in foreigner tribunals through documentary evidence.

Three persons died and several were feared trapped on Sunday when a five-storey building collapsed in Delhi’s Satya Niketan area, ANI reported.

Six persons have been rescued, of whom five are said to be critical. They have been shifted to the trauma centre at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the news agency quoted Balraj Singh, nodal officer for central accident and trauma services as saying.

“We cannot comment on their condition yet; the hospital will be able to provide an update,” he said.

Thirty to 50 students could be trapped under the debris, PTI quoted locals as saying.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (South West) Amit Goel was quoted as saying by The Indian Express that the police received a call at 1.34 pm about a building having collapsed near the Nanakpura Gurdwara. “The NDRF [National Disaster Response Force] team has also reached and rescue and relief operations are underway,” he told the newspaper.

At least eight fire vehicles have been pressed into service and earth excavators have also been called in to remove the debris.

Videos on social media showed rescue personnel carrying out search operations, with the help of local residents.

VIDEO | South Delhi building collapse: Rescue teams continue search operation for people feared trapped under debris.

(Full video available on PTI Videos - https://t.co/d8jp61yd2p) pic.twitter.com/kOE05M7NxV

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) September 6, 2026

दिल्ली के सत्य निकेतन से खौफनाक मंजर...

🆘 NSUI सत्य निकेतन हेल्पलाइन:
मदद या रेस्क्यू के लिए तुरंत कॉल करें:
📲 89999 99115 | 88758 33833 | 7248354696 | 7355577090 pic.twitter.com/K1X26S0mWQ

— NSUI Delhi (@NSUIDelhi) September 6, 2026

The police said that the building was a hostel owned by a man named Azad Bansal, and that students had been staying there. Local inquiries indicated that the building was 40 to 50 years old, and comprised a basement and five upper floors, ANI quoted the police as saying.

Repair work was going on in the basement when the building collapsed, the police said.

Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said that the adjacent building has been vacated as a precautionary measure. “Every possible effort is being made to safely rescue those trapped and provide immediate assistance to the affected families,” she said in a social media post.

The building collapse sparked criticism from opposition parties about the alleged governance failures of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Aam Aadmi Party referred to a statement by a local person alleging that residents had to make calls for 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

“Shame on the four-engine BJP government,” the party said in a social media post. “When children in Delhi were counting their breaths under the rubble, the BJP government's emergency response system was fast asleep.

“45 मिनट तक फोन करते रहे, कोई एम्बुलेंस नहीं आई!” 🚑

शर्मा आनी चाहिए चार इंजन वाली भाजपा सरकार को। दिल्ली में जब बच्चे मलबे के नीचे सांसे गिन रहे थे, तब भाजपा सरकार का Emergency Response System सो रहा था।

यह सिर्फ लापरवाही नहीं, मासूम जिंदगियों के साथ सीधा खिलवाड़ है। pic.twitter.com/0k0u2jK7Ha

— AAP (@AamAadmiParty) September 6, 2026

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that every student’s life is precious, and they must be protected at all costs.

“Students' lives were already filled with struggles – now the situation is life-threatening,” he said. “Due to the lack of good hostels in colleges or universities, students are forced to live in PG [paying guest] accommodation, with as many as 40 students staying under the same roof, and being forced to live in inhuman conditions.”

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

A booth-level agent of the Bharatiya Janata Party was arrested and later released on bail in Jharkhand’s Godda district in a case in which he has been accused of submitting bulk forms seeking the deletion of Muslim voters, The Indian Express reported.

The forms were submitted as part of the special intensive revision exercise currently underway in the state.

The agent, Vinay Kumar Mandal, was arrested on September 3, but was released on bail hours later, the newspaper quoted Godda Muffasil Police Station Inspector Anand Sah as saying.

A complaint against Mandal was filed by a voter named Mukarram Ansari, who alleged that the BJP booth-level agent submitted about 200 Form 7 applications seeking the deletion of voters – all of them at a single booth, and all of them allegedly against Muslims.

Ansari said in his complaint that all those against whom the applications were filed before the booth-level officer were genuine voters, The Indian Express reported. The booth-level officer, Sajida Bibi, said that her own name and that of her husband were on the list of applications submitted by Mandal.

The BJP’s booth-level agent was quoted as saying by the newspaper that he went to submit the forms to the officer after being told to do so. He claimed that Bibi had initially agreed to take the forms and give him a receipt.

Mandal also reportedly claimed that another booth-level agent had submitted similar forms in his own village, which is a Hindu-majority one.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Electoral registration officers in Manipur on Sunday published photo electoral rolls for all of the state’s 60 Assembly constituencies as part of the special intensive revision process.

The total number of voters in Manipur as per the final electoral rolls stands at 19,60,620, while the number of voters before the publication of the draft list was 20,93,076. This means that 6.33% voters were left out of the voter rolls after the final list was published.

The Manipur chief electoral officer said that 1,58,677 voters whose enumeration forms were not received back were excluded from the draft electoral rolls.

The draft electoral rolls, which had 19,34,399 voters, were published on July 5. Out of these voters, a total of 18,43,221 were mapped either as self or as the children of voters, while 91,178 voters were unmapped.

The authorities issued notices to the unmapped voters, as well as to 11,30,655 voters with “logical discrepancies”, which refer to situations such as a mismatch in parents’ names, a small age gap between parents and children or parents being recorded as having more than six children.

Over 96,000 claims and objections were filed from July 5 to August 4, and were processed for the final rolls.

At the end of this process, a total of 56,871 voters were included in the rolls, while 30,650 electors were deleted from the list, the state chief electoral officer stated in a press release.

Manipur was among 19 states and Union Territories where the voter roll revision was being carried out in the third phase of the special intensive revision.

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories, including West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

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

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Also read: Bihar to Bengal, the great Indian disenfranchisement now has the Supreme Court’s approval

The Assam Police on Saturday arrested 330 persons within nine hours, alleging that they were involved in fraudulent activities, including impersonating police personnel, reported The Assam Tribune.

The crackdown began at 3 am on Saturday and most of the arrests were made in Cachar district, PTI quoted Director General of Police Harmeet Singh as saying.

He added that barring a few districts “such as Sadiya and Majuli, apprehensions were made in all other places”.

Those arrested were accused of luring persons with the promise of settling police cases and impersonating police officials, claimed Singh. He added that some of the arrested persons had also threatened others and extracted money.

“Many of them used to loiter near police stations and trapped people coming for registration of their complaints with the assurance of fast-tracking it and getting their work done without any hassle,” Singh was quoted as saying by PTI. “Some of the accused were also dealing in stolen goods.”

The police officer also claimed that several of the arrested persons were using “cyber mediums” to carry out their alleged activities.

“After technical analysis of the information against the accused is acquired, ground verification is needed to ensure that the frauds are nabbed,” said Singh.

He explained that this was because in several cases, the person operating a WhatsApp account may not necessarily be the person in whose name the mobile number being used is registered, reported The Assam Tribune.

Singh said that several accused persons identified during the investigation are in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

“We will also bring them back,” he was quoted as saying.

Edited by Sneha.

A National Investigation Agency court on Saturday convicted 10 persons accused in the 2013 Jhiram Valley Maoist attack that killed 29 persons, including senior Congress leaders, reported The Indian Express.

NIA judge Ajay Singh Rajput will announce the sentence on September 16.

On May 25, 2013, more than 150 Maoists had ambushed a Congress convoy in Bastar’s Jhiram Ghati ahead of Assembly elections. Among those killed were Congress’ state unit chief Nand Kumar Patel and his son Dinesh, and former MLA Uday Mudliyar.

Party leader Mahendra Karma, who played an instrumental role in organising the anti-Maoist state-sponsored militia Salwa Judum, was also killed in the attack.

The campaign was launched in 2005 to target villages seen as harbouring Maoists. Armed vigilantes allegedly torched homes and forced villagers to flee to government-run camps.

Translated as “purification hunt” in the Gondi language, Salwa Judum was presented by the state government as a spontaneous movement by the region’s Adivasi community against the Maoists.

However, human rights activists have accused the Salwa Judum of coercing residents into leaving their villages and supporting the group. With the tribal community split between both sides, there were several deaths over several months.

An investigation into the Jhiram Valley attack showed that it was primarily targeted at Karma, reported The Indian Express.

Apart from the Congress leaders, 10 security personnel were killed.

On September 25, 2014, the NIA filed a chargesheet against nine persons arrested in the case. The agency had filed a supplementary chargesheet on September 28, 2015, against 30 more accused persons.

While 11 persons accused in the case were arrested, one of them died during trial. At least 28 more accused persons are wanted.

The 10 persons who were convicted on Saturday are Pramila Modiyam, Chaitu Lekam alias Munna, Sumita alias Punem Modiyam, Mukka Mandvi, Kosa Kavasi alias Kosaram, Aayata Markam, Madkami Deva, Joga Madkami, Banjami Sanna alias Chamru and Mahadev Nag.

Former Chhattisgarh chief minister and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel said that the judgement “feels like incomplete justice”, reported The Indian Express.

Avadhesh Jha, an office-bearer of the legal cell of the party’s Chhattisgarh unit, alleged that there was no investigation into a political conspiracy resulting in the attack, reported ANI.

On the other hand, defence counsel Arvind Choudhary said the convicted persons would appeal against the verdict, reported The New Indian Express.

Edited by Sneha.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a first information report against media baron Subhash Chandra for allegedly defrauding Life Insurance Corporation Housing Finance Limited of Rs 1,322 crore between 2018 and 2026, reported The Wire on Saturday.

The case against Chandra was registered on August 31 based on a written complaint filed by Neeta Menghani, the general manager of LIC Housing Finance Limited, reported The Indian Express.

The complaint alleged that Chandra had submitted fake certificates with inflated net worth to avail loans.

Apart from him, the CBI has booked Vasant Sagar Properties Private Limited and its director Pankaj Suroliya, Pan India Infrastructure Private Limited, Digital Subscriber Management and Consultancy Services Private Limited and its director Amish Pandya, Spirit Infrapower and Multiventures Private Limited and its director Rajeev Dholakia, reported The Hindu.

LIC Housing Finance had granted a loan of Rs 500 crore to Vasant Sagar Properties Private Limited and Pan India Infraprojects Private Limited in 2018, the newspaper quoted the complaint as saying.

It added that a second loan of Rs 480 crore was extended to Digital Subscriber Management and Consultancy Services Private Limited and to Spirit Infrapower and Multiventures Private Limited.

The FIR alleged that the first loan was granted based on a certificate submitted by Chandra, which said that his net worth was Rs 59,113.21 crore as on March 31, 2017, reported The Hindu. Another certificate, dated July 6, 2018, said that his net worth was Rs 40,562 crore.

However, during proceedings in his personal insolvency resolution process, Chandra said that his “net worth in 2024 is Rs 31.79 crores and stated that, even in 2017-’18, he did not have a net worth of more than Rs 40,000 crores”, The Wire quoted the complaint as alleging.

It further alleged that Chandra had, therefore, “colluded” with the borrowers to “defraud and cheat” LIC Housing Finance, reported The Hindu.

The borrowers defaulted on both loans, reported The Indian Express. The outstanding amount in the loan for Vasant Sagar was Rs 570.50 crore, while for the Digital Subscriber facility, it was Rs 507.25 crore.

Chandra was a Rajya Sabha MP between 2016 and 2022. He was elected to the Upper House as an Independent candidate backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Since 2022, Chandra has been the subject of insolvency proceedings filed by Indiabulls Housing Finance Limited, now known as Sammaan Capital.

Chandra had stood as a personal guarantor for a Rs 170 crore loan given to a firm, Vivek Infracon. After the loan turned bad, Indiabulls moved the National Company Law Tribunal in 2022 under Section 95 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code for insolvency proceedings against Chandra. The plea was admitted in 2024.

On August 25, National Company Law Tribunal Member (Judicial) Nilesh Sharma allowed him to pay Rs 6.2 crore to creditors against admitted claims of about Rs 22,006 crore in his insolvency process.

However, the order was stayed on September 1.

Edited by Sneha.

The Union government on Saturday advanced the population enumeration phase of the Census in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa – states where Assembly elections are due to be held between February 2027 and March 2027 – to begin on December 1.

In a notification on Saturday, the Registrar General of India stated that the exercise will conclude on January 4, 2027, with January 5, 2027, as the reference date.

The Union government had said in June that the reference date for the Census in the country, except in hilly and snow-bound areas in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, would be March 1, 2027.

The reference date of a census means the specific point in time for which population data is collected.

After the Centre’s announcement on Saturday, the Congress said the decision to advance the exercise in the four states demonstrated “shoddy planning since it was known that these elections were due”.

“Why the sudden dawn of wisdom?” asked party leader Jairam Ramesh. “Undoubtedly there are some nefarious political calculations afoot.”

The population enumeration that was to take place in Feb 2027 as part of the Census 2027 exercise(that was due in 2021) has been advanced in UP, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa where elections are due early next year. This shows shoddy planning since it was known that these elections… pic.twitter.com/rcdgnOtXkC

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) September 5, 2026

In the notification, the Centre said that residents of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa and the non-hilly regions of Uttarakhand will have the option of self-enumeration online between November 16 and November 30.

A revisional round will be conducted from January 5, 2027, to January 9, 2027.

The first phase of the census is being conducted in hilly and snow-bound areas in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The exercise will be completed by September 30, with the reference date being October 1.

Census in Manipur

The Union government on Saturday also announced that the Census in Manipur has been deferred “till further declaration”.

The decision had been taken on August 31, in view of demands by Meitei and Naga groups that the National Register of Citizens be updated before conducting the exercise.

The Kuki-Zo Council had described the demand as “premature and unjustified”, reported The New Indian Express.

Ethnic clashes had broken out in Manipur in May 2023 between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities. Tensions have also escalated between the Kukis and the Nagas this year.

The last decennial census exercise was held in 2011. In 2020, India was set to begin the first phase of the exercise – in which housing data is collected – but it had to be delayed as the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Edited by Sneha.

Also read:

• ‘Planned failure’: Is the Modi government sabotaging its own caste census?

• Is Census 2027 the first step to a National Register of Citizens?

Days after West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari demanded an apology from Anandabazar Patrika for using the term “saffron hooliganism” in a headline, a mob arrived at the newspaper’s Kolkata office on September 1 to prove that the newspaper was right.

The mob, which included members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, smeared the publication’s compound wall with saffron paint on Tuesday. They shouted slogans criticising the Bengali daily, one of the oldest newspapers in the country, chanting “bhagwa ka apman nahi sahega Hindustan”. India will not tolerate insults to saffron.

Saffron is the sacred colour of Hinduism but has been adopted by the BJP as its signature hue.

The Bengali daily had used the phrase “gerua gundami”, or saffron hooliganism, to describe the August 20 violence at Jadavpur University. That day, members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of BJP’s ideological parent the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, had clashed with Left-affiliated student groups on campus.

“The people who entered the campus of Jadavpur University and did hooliganism – they demeaned saffron, not us,” said a journalist working at the newspaper, requesting anonymity.

The journalist added: “We vividly described whatever happened that day along with photographs. Everything – the article and the photograph – substantiated the headline.”

The journalist has worked at Anandabazar Patrika for decades. He said that the paper, the most-read daily in Bengal, had weathered hostility from previous governments of the Left Front, the Trinamool and the Congress. “For a short while, advertisements were stopped,” he said. “But never did an outfit attack the main building. Nobody did that.”

Videos uploaded by BJP members on Facebook show police personnel standing around as men wearing saffron painted the pillars of the compound. “The police remained mute spectators,” the journalist said.

On August 28, the police had registered a first information report against staffers of the newspapers. Hours later, Chief Minister Adhikari followed up with a warning that anyone seen to be attacking saffron will “not be able to handle the terrible consequences”.

The next day, the journalist said, he saw a group of eight to 10 persons protesting outside the newspaper office. “I was coming in and going out of the office for some errand,” he said. “I saw them raising slogans against Anandabazar Patrika, mostly in Hindi.” The same slogans were shouted again on September 1, but this time the mob was bigger, he noted.

He said if somebody had an objection to the headline, there were democratic ways of protesting. “One can write a letter to the editor, and generally those letters are also published with due respect,” he said.

But, in this case, he noted: “The chief minister himself incited people.”

The journalist added: “The dangerous element with this government is that if you oppose them, if they don’t like anything your writing, they brand you as anti-nationals.”

The same thing has happened to the students of Jadavpur University, he continued. “Whatever slogans they are writing, you may not like them, but you can’t call them anti-national for that,” he said.

The protesters asked the newspaper to apologise but the ABP Group, the parent organisation of the Anandabazar Patrika, did not succumb to that pressure, the journalist said.

“So whatever they’re trying to do, they’re trying to make us frightened,” he said. “They want us to cower down to their pressure.”

He said that the intimidation had left an impact on the newsroom. “We feel insecure,” he said. “We feel concerned. We feel anxious for the safety of our colleagues.”

While the staff were determined to continue their work despite the threats, he said that they “cannot wait for something more grave to happen”.

Even as many media organisations protested this incident, the Press Club in Calcutta had been silent, the journalist pointed out. “This issue is not only about a particular newspaper, it’s about the freedom of press,” he said.

The journalist added: “Everybody wants a free working atmosphere. We don’t want to become heroes. Fighting the government or a very influential political party is not our job. We are here to report facts.”

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

Voting rights. The names of more than two crore persons were removed from Maharashtra’s draft voter list as part of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls. The excluded electors account for 21.1% of the state’s previous voter base.

In Delhi, 47.7 lakh names were deleted from the draft list. They account for 33% of the Union Territory’s electorate.

Those removed from the voter list were marked as either permanently shifted, deceased, absent, duplicate entries or placed under the “other” category, which includes those who refused to fill the enumeration form.

Voters can file claims and objections against their exclusion from the draft list between August 31 and September 30. The appeals will be heard by October 29. The final electoral roll will be published on November 4.

More than six crore names have been deleted from draft lists of several states during the ongoing phase of the exercise.

Scroll’s SIR experience is a microcosm of what urban India is facing

Ex-bureaucrat booked for a tweet. Former civil servant Ashish Joshi, who was picked up during his morning walk on Wednesday by plainclothes police personnel and interrogated for several hours, said on Friday that a first information report had been registered against him for a social media post. It was filed under sections pertaining to provocation with the intent to cause a riot.

The FIR was registered for a post he made on August 26, in which he had reportedly called for a “Nuremberg-style trial” of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

Joshi, however, said that he had been questioned about another post from last month, in which he had alleged that there had been a “massive showdown” between Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Home Secretary Govind Mohan after the police action against students protesting at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.

NSA detention quashed. The Allahabad High Court quashed the preventive detention of 25-year-old Aakriti Chaudhary under the National Security Act. The Delhi University graduate has been in jail for nearly five months in connection with the workers’ protest in Noida.

The court held that she was detained by the Uttar Pradesh government based on a “concocted story”. The Noida authorities were directed to pay Chaudhary Rs 5 lakh as compensation.

However, she will remain in jail as she is yet to secure bail in other cases registered in connection with the April protests.

Fact check: Despite official denial, viral video showing police beating women workers is from Noida, reported Ayush Tiwari

Also on Scroll last week

• Will Rahul Gandhi’s ‘smash the patriarchy’ call attract young, urban women to Congress?
• For months, tribal children in Madhya Pradesh kept dying. The government woke up too late
• In Congress-ruled Karnataka, Bengali Muslim migrant workers come under citizenship scrutiny
• Two days after Bhagwat’s speech in New York, 90 US politicians pledge to not take RSS-linked funding
• Flood risks to Nepal hydropower project were known – but banks ignored them
• Why Tamil Nadu’s factories are death traps for migrant workers
• How a Victorian philosopher found common ground between Hindu philosophy and socialism
• A decade since landmark law, disability rights and justice are stuck in a loop
• What the film ‘Last Man in Tower’ says about Mumbai: ‘No corner of the city’s left untouched’
• ‘Gandhari’ review: Film about child sex trafficking is all a blur

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

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In early July, as the students’ protests in Jantar Mantar were taking shape, the Trinamool Congress MP, Mahua Moitra, was one of the first politicians to show up in person and offer solidarity. Three weeks later, when the Union education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, resigned, Moitra thanked the younger generation “for saving Indian democracy” by bringing “this fascist, arrogant government to its knees”.

This, as she pointed out, was something the Opposition parties had not been able to do in the past 12 years.

Mahua Moitra’s praise was well merited. The resignation of the education minister, the home minister’s prolonged absence from Parliament, the sacking of several senior BJP office-bearers, and – not least – the clumsy, late-night videos of the prime minister, all testified to a regime whose customary air of hubristic arrogance had (at least temporarily) given way to weakness and confusion

It is too early to say whether the momentum that the student “cockroaches” have thus far generated can be sustained, leading to a fuller renewal of the constitutional promises of liberty, equality and fraternity. Historians are not astrologers, so, instead of projecting forward, I shall here look backwards, exploring other times in the past when Indian students have sought to leave their impress on politics and public life.

The first such occasion was 120 years ago, during the swadeshi movement in Bengal. As Sumit Sarkar observed in his book on that particular upsurge, “Students of every district came to study in Calcutta, and no doubt it was through them above all that the movement initially spread into the mofussil.” While the more prominent leaders came from the established professional and landed classes, writes Sarkar, “the volunteers themselves of course came largely from the student community, many of them of extremely tender years”.

In subsequent years, students energetically participated in the movements against British colonial rule led by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. Male students joined the Non-co-operation and Civil Disobedience movements in large numbers, organising demonstrations and courting arrest. Students were even more active in the Quit India movement, filling the jails in their thousands.

A feature of Quit India was the dynamic role played by young women. The stirring story of Usha Mehta, the Bombay University student who helped organise the underground “Congress radio”, has been documented in an excellent book by Usha Thakkar.

The story of Usha Mehta and Congress Radio https://t.co/2DjqNf9De7 via @IndianExpress #UshaMehta pic.twitter.com/TPcvaFbfg8

— Mani Bhavan Mumbai (@GandhiInMumbai) March 27, 2024

But there were other notable (if now less known) examples too. A file I found in the archives, titled “Karnatak in Revolt”, narrates how the “most phenomenal feature” of the movement in this part of India was the response of the student community, which organised boycotts and hartals in Belgaum, Gadag, Bangalore, Mysore, Mangalore, Bijapur, Bellari, Sirsi and other places.

On October 23, 1942, two students from Dharwad, a Miss Shenolikar and a Miss Gulawadi, entered the district court, hoisted the national flag, told the district judge (who was present) that he was dismissed from his office, distributed leaflets, and disappeared. (There the archival trail runs out – one would love to know what happened to Miss Shenolikar and Miss Gulawadi in later life.)

In the decades leading up to Independence, students were active in social and political movements. What of the years after India rid itself of colonial rule? In 1968, the American scholar, Philip G. Altbach, edited a book titled Turmoil and Transition: Higher Education and Student Politics in India. In his introduction, Altbach remarked that while “students played a key role in the struggle of Independence”, since 1947 “most student agitation has not been directly political, but has concerned non-ideological issues”.

The book’s case studies examined the “non-ideological issues” raised by students in the 1960s which included not only high fees and poor hostel facilities but also cultural activities such as music and theatre.

Within a year of this book’s publication, students had re-entered politics, playing a major role in the movement for a separate state of Telangana which started in 1969, although it bore final fruition long afterwards. This was one of three regional movements in post-Independence India that have strongly featured students. The others were the Assam movement of the late 1970s/early 1980s and the Uttarakhand movement of the 2000s.

Of the Assam agitation, the historian, Arupjyoti Saikia, writes that “the movement was largely in the hands of student leaders”, whose “idealism inspired large numbers; when they delivered their fiery speeches, crowds of both women and men listened in rapt attention”. The All Assam Students’ Union gave birth to the Asom Gana Parishad, which won an assembly election in 1985. Three decades later, students also helped propel the Telangana Rashtra Samithi to power in that state.

All these struggles form the unacknowledged prehistory of the movement currently underway. However, the most obvious precursor from the past is the “JP movement” of the mid 1970s in which students played such a prominent part. In his book, Protest Movements in Two Indian States, Ghanshyam Shah carefully documents the course of the protests in Gujarat and Bihar.

In both states, students played a leading role. In Gujarat, the Congress chief minister, Chimanbhai Patel, was widely seen as corrupt, becoming a prime target of youth anger. Students attacked the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, for protecting Chimanbhai and for not being able to stem price rise. The protests were by no means non-violent, featuring attacks on government property and the looting of shops.

Shah writes that, as in Gujarat, “students were the vanguard of the Bihar movement” of the 1970s. However, unlike in Gujarat, in Bihar one elderly individual played a key leadership role. This was Jayaprakash Narayan. As Shah observes, “his concern for the poor, his moral stance, his simplicity and humility”, all contributed to the veteran freedom-fighter’s charisma. JP appealed to the students to give up studies for a year to “save democracy”.

The students who flocked to his call included members of the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and also many young socialist activists.

The present student upsurge resembles the JP movement in one significant manner. The principal targets of both have been authoritarianism and the cult of personality, as represented in the 1970s by Indira Gandhi and her party and by Narendra Modi and his party now. Yet there are also major differences. The ABVP was then against the ruling regime; now it is firmly on the side of the ruling regime. It does also seem that, compared to the JP movement, women students are more visible in the current protests, their idealism and courage reminiscent of the female satyagrahis of 1942.

The upsurge of the 1970s presented itself as a second freedom struggle, working to finally fulfil the failed promises of the first. In so far as it helped end one-party rule and brought about a fresh wind of democracy, the movement succeeded. On the other hand, the JP movement also gave legitimacy to the forces of Hindutva, which have steadily gathered power and influence in the years that followed.

To their credit, the student leaders of the present resolutely oppose both authoritarianism and religious bigotry.

The invocation by them of Ambedkar, Gandhi and Nehru – all together – suggests that they see their movement as a third freedom struggle, working to finally fulfil the failed promises of the first and the second. How far these ideals will be realised in the years ahead shall depend on the actions of countless individuals and organisations, many of whom who were not themselves present in Jantar Mantar during those heady days of June and July.

This article first appeared in The Telegraph.

Paswan accused influencer Swatantra Bharadwaj of “falsely and publicly” citing his name, The Hindu reported.

A row had erupted after Bharadwaj claimed in a podcast that a call from Delhi minister Kapil Mishra helped him avoid arrest over the alleged assault, despite having “cracked the skull” of student activist Nishu Aazad’s father Sanjay Kumar.

In the same video Bharadwaj had said: “Chirag Paswan is my elder brother...I have everyone’s support.”

On Saturday, Bharadwaj was arrested and remanded to one-day police custody, The Indian Express reported.

On Friday, Paswan said that he and his party, Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), “stand firmly” with Kumar’s family. “Ensuring justice for them is a responsibility that both I and my party fully accept,” he was quoted as saying by ANI.

He further added: “In public life, many people come to meet us and take pictures. But this does not mean that they know us personally or I know them personally.”

Bharadwaj’s claims

On July 23, Kumar was assaulted at Jantar Mantar during demonstrations against alleged irregularities in competitive examinations.

Recently, a purported video of Bharadwaj that was widely shared online showed him claiming that he was not jailed despite committing the assault.

Following the controversy over the video, members of the Cockroach Janta Party staged a protest on Friday outside the Parliament Street police station, demanding that charges under provisions relating to attempt to murder be added to the first information report registered in the case.

CJP co-convenor Saurav Das said that the additional deputy commissioner of police had promised to adding charges of attempt to murder and provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act to the case.

Meanwhile, Bharadwaj has claimed that he acted in self-defence and had he not done so he could have “lynched by the mob or killed”.

“There was no attempt to attack [Kumar],” he said. “I have proof in the form of videos. I was gheraoed by 10-15 people. When I acted in self-defence, he was hit on the head.”

He added: “As per his medical report from Delhi Police, he did not suffer major injuries.”

The authorities in Uttar Pradesh on Saturday demolished a mosque situated within the Saharanpur district magistrate’s office complex, The Times of India reported. The demolition followed a court’s decision to uphold an earlier order declaring the structure illegal.

Samajwadi Party MP Iqra Hasan alleged that she was placed under house arrest by police at her Kairana residence to prevent her from travelling to Saharanpur, ANI reported.

The demolition followed a complaint by a former office bearer of the Bajrang Dal, who alleged that the mosque had been illegally constructed inside the district magistrate office complex, a sensitive government premises where confidential administrative work is conducted, The Times of India reported.

The Bajrang Dal and the Vishva Hindu Parishad are part of a group of Hindutva outfits led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

On July 17, the city magistrate’s court ordered the mosque’s demolition and directed its occupants to pay around Rs 6.41 crore as compensation, citing alleged encroachment and unauthorised use of government land. The order was challenged before the district judge’s court, which on Friday upheld the decision.

On Saturday, the Kairana MP said that the mosque was sealed and barricades were erected around the area after a lower civil court passed its order. “People wanted to speak to the officials to request some time regarding the matter. People wanted to approach the High Court,” she said.

She added that a large police force was deployed at her residence overnight. “I intended to visit Saharanpur to meet officials regarding the Collectorate mosque issue,” Hasan said, adding that she was not allowed to leave her home.

“In a democracy, public representatives are elected to raise the voice of the people,” ANI quoted her as saying. “That voice cannot be suppressed by stopping me.”

Describing the demolition as “shameful”, Hasan said the manner in which the action was carried out showed how “democracy has been murdered”.

Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi also raised concern about the “rush” with which the mosque was demolished.

“Why not wait for the matter to be heard in the higher courts, where arguments could be presented?” PTI quoted him as saying. “This shows that the [Bharatiya Janata Party] in Uttar Pradesh did not want the case to reach the higher courts because they knew they were in the wrong.”

He added: “The BJP government and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh are acting unconstitutionally, leading to the demolition of not just one, but several mosques and the destruction of graveyards in the region.”

“We want to ask, does the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, framed by Babasaheb Ambedkar in the Constitution of India, not apply to Muslims?” Owaisi said.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The threat of a strong El Niño still looming, rainfall in this year’s monsoon season varied by the month. June was one of the driest in India’s history, closing at a 35% deficit whereas July was 1% above normal.

This “normal” rainfall in July was largely driven by Central India whereas East and South India had a large deficit. As of August 26, the all India seasonal rainfall stands at a 13% deficit, in keeping with the weather agency’s forecast of a below-normal monsoon. The deficit is still most pronounced in East and South India.

There have also been floods or flood-like situations in Assam, Himachal Pradesh, and parts of the National Capital Region, Uttar Pradesh etc. What does this mean for India’s primary cropping season, that is, Kharif? What does this mean for farmers, foodgrain production, food prices and ultimately, for consumers?

Reviewing preparedness for this Kharif crop season earlier in June, Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had said, “There is no need to panic. What is required is preparedness and collective action.”

The Union government had urged states to promote short-duration crop varieties and those capable of delivering higher yields with lower water requirements. It further encouraged farmers to adopt crop diversification.

“Intercropping and mixed farming practices are also being promoted to ensure that if one crop is affected, farmers can still generate income from others,” the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare said, and listed a number of measures it is taking including water conservation and harvesting works under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and Viksit Bharat- Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin.

So far, India’s sown area under pulses has increased as compared to this time last year but the area under rice declined by 1.3 million hectares, or 3% lower than 2025-’26. Even the area sown under coarse cereals (ragi and maize) has seen an overall dip, oilseeds (soybean and castor) has seen a decrease, and so has sugarcane and cotton. Overall, India’s sown area as yet is 1.6 million hectares less compared to this time last year.

Sugar prices have surged within one month, going from Rs 48 on July 20 to Rs 55 on August 20. As a precautionary measure, the government permitted duty-free import of raw sugar “to further augment domestic availability”.

On this backdrop, ISignal spoke with Siraj Hussain, former Union agriculture secretary, on what a weak monsoon could mean for India and his assessment of the situation of the ongoing Kharif crop season.

Hussain had earlier served as secretary for food processing and industry, and was chairman and managing director of Food Corporation of India. At present, he is advisor (food processing), FICCI and a trustee of World Food Programme Trust for India.

Edited excerpts:

India as a whole has had a wide variation this monsoon so far. East and Northeast India has a 26% rainfall deficit, South has 22% deficit and Northwest has 10% deficit rainfall so far. All of these regions are important from an agricultural point-of-view. A prolonged dry spell or uneven rainfall distribution in August could affect Kharif yields. What is your assessment so far?

All India rainfall figure does not reveal much. This year, Bihar has been in a bad shape as the cumulative deficit is 40% as on August 22. It was 40% deficient in June, 42% cumulative deficiency in July and August has been no better. So the poorest state of India, with very low income of farmers has experienced very poor rainfall. Marathwada, Vidarbha, Rayalseema and South interior Karnataka have all seen deficient rainfall. In these regions crops will suffer and farmers income will go down.

Deficiency in Punjab is about 33%. Saurashtra and Kutch in Gujarat have a shortfall of about 25%. Rajasthan is also in bad shape with 22% cumulative deficiency.

If we are to only look at August, East UP received almost normal rainfall while it had a cumulative deficiency of 34% by the end of July. Meanwhile west MP, an important soybean-growing region, has received 20% less rain in August. Of course, a lot will depend on rainfall in the rest of August and in September. August is a critical stage for grain formation and we have to remember that too much rainfall in September can damage the standing crops.

District-level rainfall may differ from state-level patterns and the condition of crops depends on rainfall at a local level. A recent evaluation of crop condition [21st August 2026] by Agriwatch showed that out of 446 districts monitored by them, about 32% districts were under watch. Of this, 15% districts are under watch for “dry risk” and only 5% districts had very poor condition of crops.

But, on the whole I don’t think there will be any significant loss of foodgrain production. It should not be more than 5% loss.

Overall, India’s sown area is now about 1.6 million hectare less as compared to this time last year and particularly rice, sugarcane, oilseeds are affected. What is your reading of this?

As of 21st August, overall sown area is only marginally lower than last year’s. But it does not mean that production will also be similar to last year, as growth of crops, especially in rainfed areas, needs regular supply of water. By now, the sown crops have reached the flowering stage, which will be followed by pod formation and maturity.

For example, paddy is entering the stem elongation and panicle development stage. Paddy needs a steady supply of irrigation at this stage. Even short periods of water stress can cause severe spikelet sterility, poor panicle growth, and loss of yield.

So low rainfall in August will have an impact on several sown crops in dry regions. In fact, even irrigated regions need rainfall for healthy and optimum growth. So, even though the area [under Kharif] may look normal, the yield may be lower.

The government has identified 111 most vulnerable districts this Kharif season. In particular, these are districts with deficit rainfall and less than 25% irrigation coverage. If rains continue to be weak in August and September, what advice will you give farmers of these districts that fall under Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Bihar, Jharkhand, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha?

The government did well to identify the most vulnerable districts. I understand that there were regular meetings with state governments to review the progress of sowing and issue of advisories to farmers. As far as I know, there are districts having large deficit of rainfall.

The advice to paddy farmers is to maintain a shallow standing water depth of about 5 cm in the field during this reproductive phase of plants. Intermittent irrigation is recommended when soil in the irrigated fields reaches the saturation limit. Farmers know that they have to ensure that the soil should never develop cracks.

You would be surprised that even in an El Niño year, 146 districts have a large excess of rainfall. Farmers in most regions already know what to do after sowing their crops under conditions of lower rainfall.

When you were the Union agriculture secretary and India would see a weak monsoon, what measures were taken by the Centre then and are there any learnings which should be implemented now?

Actually right now, the situation is not as serious as it was in 2015. There are no serious reports of drinking water shortage or animal fodder being badly affected. The year 2015 was the second year of drought, whereas last year, we did not have less rainfall; in fact, we had excess rainfall. The area under irrigation was 45% in 2015 and it is 55% now. So, I believe India is better prepared. The area under micro irrigation has also gone up.

In regions where early rain triggered sowing followed by dry spells this year, farmers had to re-sow or spend heavily on diesel-powered irrigation. How severe is the financial burden on small and marginal farmers who are caught in this cycle?

This situation can be really hard for farmers but it is covered under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana through prevented sowing/planting/germination risk component.

If adverse seasonal or climatic conditions force the farmers to bear extra costs to resow or completely prevent farmers from planting, PMFBY provides financial safety nets. If the state’s agricultural machinery at the ground level is proactive, it will assist the farmers in lodging claims with the insurance companies.

India’s agriculture ministry has advised farmers to take up short-duration crop varieties and those capable of delivering higher yields with lower water requirements. Could you please elaborate what this means for farmers?

There are several recommended crops. For example, moong matures in 60–65 days, Urad matures in 70-75 days and thrives well on residual soil moisture. Lobia matures in 60-70 days. It is an excellent crop used for grain as well as fodder. Bajra, ragi and jowar can also grow well even if rainfall is lower. The farmers are well aware of all this.

The challenge before the state government is to ensure supply of high quality seeds of these crops. The problem is that we don’t know the quantum of climate-resistant seeds actually sold. That information is not in the public domain.

If dry spells lower output quality or yields in rainfed areas, farmers often end up selling below the Minimum Support Price (MSP) to local traders. What immediate relief measures should the Union and state governments trigger to protect farm incomes?

This is complicated. Quite often, states are not able to ensure MSP to farmers. Since the market prices are ruling high, it is possible that prices may not fall below MSP but the states should watch closely and procure pulses at MSP wherever the prices fall below that. Also, import duty should ensure that landed price is not lower than the MSP of that crop.

What do you think about the policies of different state governments announced so far? For example, the Maharashtra government had advised farmers in June to delay sowing due to poor rainfall.

As far as I know, no state government has declared a drought. The conditions for declaring a drought were modified in 2016 when the drought manual was revised. So it is now more difficult to declare drought, as a result of which the resultant support may not have come. Some measures are contingent upon a drought being declared, for eg, subsidy on diesel or subsidy for horticulture crops.

The government had said that India has an adequate buffer stock of food grains, well above the prescribed norms and that this is quite enough to take care of the Public Distribution System requirement, as well as any emergency requirement. Your thoughts?

On July 1, 2026, the government had about 66.3 million tonnes of rice against the buffer norm of about 13.54 million tonnes. So there is plenty of wheat and rice available with the government. However, pulses and edible oils are witnessing higher prices and the government has to take care of that.

From a policy standpoint, does India’s weather-forecasting architecture give Krishi Bhawan and state governments enough lead time to prepare contingency crop plans in cases like a developing El Niño?

Yes, contingency planning is not new. The Central Research Institute of Dryland Agriculture, Hyderabad has been preparing such plans for over 15 years. The challenge is to put the plans into operation and make climate-resilient seeds available in time so that the farmers can sow the crops which are recommended in the contingency plan of various districts, especially the vulnerable ones identified by the government.

A report by a ratings agency stated that India also faces the threat of higher agricultural input costs due to the geopolitical conflict in West Asia. An unusually dry monsoon means that the agri sector is the most exposed. Do you agree that global events will continue to affect the sector? How can farmers and consumers be protected?

The government has done well to shield the farmers by not allowing any increase in the price of fertilisers. Urea was imported by the fertiliser companies at more than $950 per tonne, much higher than $400-$450 per tonne before the US and Israel attacked Iran in February 2026. Electricity is free in several states and is highly subsidised in others.

Vulnerable consumers are protected for their requirement of wheat and rice by the National Food Security Act, 2013. But drought in some regions will affect production of pulses, maize, soybean etc. We are already witnessing high retail prices of sugar and the government has been forced to allow import of 1 million tonnes of raw sugar. So we cannot remain immune to the effects of El Niño when it comes to the food and agriculture economy, which in turn impacts consumption also.

El Niño has strengthened and is expected to grow stronger until October. How can the government prepare from now to protect farmers growing Rabi crops?

In areas where overall monsoon has been near normal and reservoir situation is good, there would be good soil moisture for rabi crops. The good news is that so far, it has not turned out to be a Super El Niño.

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

A burial was disrupted and mourners allegedly assaulted by a mob purportedly associated with Hindutva groups at a church in Sahanagar town of Purba Bardhaman district in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled West Bengal on August 14, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

Parish Priest-in-Charge Father Samuel Hembrom of St Claret Church told the newspaper that the mob forced the body, which had already been lowered into the grave, to be taken out. The body was later taken to another cemetery in Bardhaman town, he said.

Hembrom said the mob had demanded to see the “papers for the burial ground”.

“We said give us some time to get them from the church…we protested,” The Indian Express quoted him as saying. “But they did not allow the burial.”

Hembrom alleged that he sent a complaint by email to the superintendent of police and the block development officer but “nothing happened”.

Purba Bardhaman Superintendent of Police Pushpa told The Indian Express that the woman who died “did not belong to the area”, prompting locals to object to the burial.

The police officer said that the residents had also claimed that the land was a private property and not a cemetery, adding that the land records were being checked.

Pushpa also dismissed reports about the assault on mourners.

“I don’t think there was an assault,” The Indian Express quoted the police officer as saying. “However, I will check with the local police station. There was a law and order problem and police priority was to control that.”

Attacks on Christian gatherings

Several incidents of attacks on Christian gatherings have been reported in West Bengal recently.

On August 26, a prayer meeting at a house in Check Milepost village in Purba Medinipur was disrupted, and the pastor and his wife were allegedly assaulted.

The mob accused Pastor Joy Sutradhar of forcibly converting those attending the prayer meeting to Christianity, The Indian Express reported.

He added that members of the community contacted their lawyers, who came to the police station and helped secure their release. “Out of fear, we did not file a complaint,” he told the newspaper.

Sutradhar said that a police complaint was filed later by email.

On August 25, an attack was reported at a prayer meeting at a house in Ghusuri in Howrah. Father Suraj Saroj of Church of the Grace told the newspaper that community members were beaten and some were injured.

He alleged that police made the group wait for hours at the station and then questioned them about the church, its funds and credentials. The group did not file a complaint and has since suspended house prayers and visits in the area, the newspaper reported.

The police have not commented on the two incidents so far.

On August 23, a mob entered a house in Uluberia town of Howrah district where Sunday prayers were being held, alleging that “forced conversions” were taking place at the gathering.

Pastor Mithun Hazra told The Indian Express that around 60 persons had gathered at the rented house for the prayer meeting. He said a mob chanting slogans entered around 3 pm and assaulted those present before causing damage to the premises.

Hazra said that the police rescued the group and took them to hospital. After receiving treatment, they went to the police station and filed a complaint. “Since that day, we have not held house prayers in the area,” he told the newspaper.

Howrah Rural Superintendent of Police Amit Verma said that police had received a complaint and said a first information report had been registered, The Indian Express reported. No arrests have been made in the case.

Herod Mullick, founder of the Bengal Christian Council said that similar incidents were also reported during house prayers on August 30 in Jagatballavpur in Howrah and Hingalganj in North 24 Parganas.

Debdutta Majhi, president of the Hindu right-wing group Singha Bahini, one of the groups blamed for the attacks, defended the protests.

“In Uluberia and other places, forced conversions with the lure of money are rampant,” The Indian Express quoted Majhi as saying. “We are protesting against this. It cannot be allowed to continue.”

West Bengal Tribal Development and Minority Affairs Minister Kshudiram Tudu told The Indian Express that people have the right to pray and that the government does not believe in interfering with their religious beliefs.

“But if forced conversions – not those by choice – are happening, then law will take its course,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “One has the right to file a complaint.”

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The University of Oxford in the United Kingdom has agreed to repatriate 39 human remains belonging to the Naga people that were taken during colonial rule and put on display for decades.

The Pitt Rivers Museum, which holds collections from Oxford University, has the world’s largest Naga collection. It has around 8,000 Naga objects, including human remains, mainly skulls, and 178 objects that contain or may contain human hair. The museum removed all human remains from public display in 2020, Reuters reported.

Skulls and other body parts were often taken from Asia, Africa and elsewhere to Britain and other former colonial powers as “trophies”, and were traded, displayed or studied.

There are growing calls worldwide for such human remains, as well as stolen art and artefacts, to be returned to their communities as part of a wider movement seeking reparations for colonialism and slavery.

On Saturday, Naga Tribe Hobos and the Forum for Naga Reconciliation said in a statement that a Naga delegation will travel to the Pitt Rivers Museum to “claim and return” the ancestral remains.

The handover, scheduled for November, will be the largest repatriation of human remains from the museum, The New York Times quoted Pitt Rivers director Laura Van Broekhoven as saying.

Naga representatives have sought the return of the remains for years, with formal discussions with the Pitt Rivers Museum beginning in 2020.

In 2025, a team of Naga representatives visited the museum for talks as part of the repatriation process.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Anamika Pathak.

Also read: Why Nagas want overseas museums to repatriate ancestral human remains in their collections

The toll in the flash flood and mudslide in Nepal and China, which occurred on August 26, rose to 1,375 on Saturday. Of these, 1,344 deaths were reported in Nepal.

The remaining 31 deaths were on the Chinese side of the border, Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

Nearly 5,000 persons, including 618 foreigners, were missing in Nepal and more than 500 in China. Those missing in Nepal included 275 Indians, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Friday.

External affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that 166 Indians have been rescued so far. He added that 1,907 Indian citizens had safely crossed into Nepal from China. There are no Indian travellers stranded on the Chinese side, he said.

Jaiswal also said that India had supplied about 95 tonnes of relief material to Nepal on seven aircrafts so far.

The floods occurred in the Rasuwa district along Nepal’s northern border with China. The mountainous district is located about 120 km north of Kathmandu. As there was no rainfall in the area, residents did not have a warning about the deluge.

The United States Geological Survey has said that the floods were caused by a glacial collapse that sent a wall of water and debris downstream, reported AFP.

विपत्तिले भत्कायो, हामी पुनः आशाको पुल जोड्दैछौँ।

नुवाकोटको विदुरस्थित तादी खोलामा एक्रो ब्रिज जडान गर्दै #NepaliArmy #BhotekoshiFlood #नेपालीसेना pic.twitter.com/kJSRguTbfi

— Nepali Army (@NepaliArmyHQ) September 5, 2026

Delhi on Kathmandu’s compensation remarks

On Nepali Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal’s remarks on Tuesday that India, China and the US, among the top industrial emitters of carbon dioxide, should compensate Nepal for climate change, Jaiswal said that New Delhi has consistently maintained that climate change is a common challenge.

“Action in this regard must be based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities,” he said.

Jaiswal further said that developed countries, which are “historically responsible” for emissions and have contributed “overwhelmingly” to climate change, must take the lead in reducing emissions. He added that these countries should support developing nations through financial assistance and technology transfer to address the challenge.

On Tuesday, Khanal had said that Nepal’s greenhouse gas emissions were virtually negligible, yet the country was “paying the ultimate price” for a global crisis it did not create.

However, on Friday, the Nepali foreign minister clarified to ANI that Kathmandu had not formally claimed or asked for compensation from India or any other country.

“Our call has been for the global community to look at this disaster from the perspective of climate change and the impact it’s having in Nepal,” the news agency quoted him as saying. “I’ve also mentioned that all three countries – China, India and Nepal face and share similar environmental ecosystems…”

He said that Kathmandu wants India, China and Nepal to “come together to be better prepared”, but also for the global community not to look at the disaster as a one-time event or a matter of one-time support.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Donations made to six political parties based in Gujarat were more than those made to national parties, except the Bharatiya Janata Party, in the financial year 2023-’24, BBC News Hindi reported on Friday.

The six parties categorised as registered unrecognised political parties were the Aam Janmat Party, Bharatiya National Janata Dal, Garib Kalyan Party, New India United Party, Satyawadi Rakshak Party and the Swatantrata Abhivyakti Party.

The six parties received donations of Rs 1,700 crore during the fiscal year 2023-’24, BBC reported citing data from the Election Commission and the Association for Democratic Reforms poll watchdog.

Five parties recognised as national parties at the time – the Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the National People’s Party – had received donations of Rs 1,480 crore.

The Aam Janmat Party had received Rs 620 crore in donations in the fiscal year, more than double of the Congress’ Rs 281 crore, BBC reported.

The financial year included the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections held in April and May that year.

While the five national parties had fielded 893 candidates in the 2024 general election, the six Gujarat-based parties had fielded 15 candidates.

Of the six registered unrecognised parties, four were based in one area of Ahmedabad, Naroda.

In August 2025, Dainik Bhaskar had reported that 10 “anonymous parties” in Gujarat had received Rs 4,300 crore as funds between 2019-’20 and 2023-’24, even though they rarely contested polls.

This period encompassed the Lok Sabha elections of 2019 and 2024, and the 2022 Assembly elections in the state. The 10 parties had fielded only 43 candidates in the polls, who garnered only 54,069 votes in total, the newspaper reported.

The 10 parties included five of the six registered unrecognised parties the BBC reported about on Friday.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had at the time urged the Election Commission to respond to the report, asking how these parties received thousands of crores of rupees and where the money went.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

At least 306 persons have been killed and 49 are missing in Manipur since the beginning of the ethnic violence in the state in May 2023, PTI quoted the government as having told the Assembly on Thursday.

State Home Minister Govindas Konthoujam provided the data recorded till August 31 in response to a question raised in the House. He said that the ethnic conflict had also caused widespread displacement and disrupted normal life across the state.

Ethnic clashes had first broken out in Manipur in May 2023 between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zo-Hmar communities.

The state was under President’s Rule between February 2025 and February 2026 after Bharatiya Janata Party leader N Biren Singh stepped down as the chief minister amid allegations from Kuki-Zomi-Hmar groups that his response to the violence had been partisan and that he had stoked majoritarianism.

Yumnam Khemchand Singh became the chief minister on February 4 this year.

He informed the Assembly on Thursday that 60,000 persons were displaced during the violence, which he described as an “unprecedented crisis”, The Telegraph reported. Of them, 36,000 internally displaced persons had been resettled and 24,000 remained in relief camps across Manipur.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.