The News Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority has imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on Zee News for airing an unverified video that falsely linked a traffic jam on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway to a truck driver offering namaz, Live Law reported on Wednesday.

The complainants alleged that the channel broadcast a video claiming that a Muslim truck driver had stopped his vehicle in the middle of the highway to pray, leading to a massive traffic jam.

However, according to fact-checks and traffic advisories, the highway disruption was because of severe weather conditions and landslides. The broadcast communalised a routine traffic disruption and presented an unverified social media clip as the cause, the complainants alleged.

In its response, Zee News stated it had made clear during the telecast that the video was “viral” and unverified, Live Law reported. The channel submitted that it was reporting on widely shared online content and that the video was deleted after it was found to be fake.

The digital standards authority held that the use of unverified social media content by the broadcaster amounted to a serious lapse and violated the principle of “accuracy” under the Code of Conduct.

It added that members are required to adhere to the code before telecasting or publishing content.

The authority also said that there has been a growing trend of broadcasters and digital publishers relying on widely shared social media content.

This carries risks of distortion, misinformation and Artificial Intelligence-generated deepfakes being promoted, the authority observed.

It issued additional guidelines, supplementing existing standards, to regulate the use of social media content by broadcasters.

The authority mandated that all information, images and videos sourced from social media must be verified for accuracy before being broadcast or published. Wherever possible, such content should be corroborated through on-ground reporting and reliable sources, such as eyewitness accounts, police authorities and official government agencies.

It also directed that images and videos be examined for distortion, manipulation or the possibility of being AI-generated. Even where content is found to be authentic, it must not be presented out of context in a manner that could result in misinformation.

The authority also said that social media content used in reporting on military operations, armed conflict, internal disturbances, communal violence, public disorder, crime and other sensitive situations must be assessed against the principles of “public interest” and “accuracy”.

It also clarified that merely stating that a video is circulating on social media or that its authenticity is unverified does not absolve a broadcaster of responsibility under the Code of Conduct.

The authority directed that the guidelines be circulated among members and editors of the News Broadcasters and Digital Association and that the order be published on its website and included in its annual report.

Galgotias University has been asked to vacate its stall at the India AI Impact Summit exhibition in Delhi, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying on Wednesday. This came amid a controversy about the origin of a robotic dog the institute had displayed on Monday.

Power to the university’s pavilion at the summit was reportedly cut off, according to the news agency.

The summit, which began on Monday and will end on Friday, is being promoted as the first major gathering on artificial intelligence in the Global South. Twenty world leaders, officials from major technology companies and exhibitors from 30 countries are attending the event.

On Wednesday, the Greater Noida-based university was criticised on social media after a faculty member passed off a commercially available Chinese robot as developed by the university.

Social media users identified the robot as the Go2, manufactured by Chinese robotics company Unitree Robotics. It is available online for about $1,600, or Rs 1.4 lakh.

Amid the backlash, the university on Tuesday evening denied having claimed that it had built the robot.

The university added that it had recently bought the “Robodog” from Unitree for its students. “Our students are experimenting with it, testing its limits...” it added.

However, social media users said that the university’s claim was “incorrect and misleading”.

In a context note added to the university’s statement on X, social media users pointed out that the institute had named the off-the-shelf product “Orion” and had claimed during an interview to DD News that it had been “developed by the Centre of Excellence at the Galgotias University”.

Hi, professor Dr Aishwarya Srivastava.

"You need to meet Orion. This has been developed by the centre of excellence at Galgotias University." https://t.co/3yK6fUVHHo pic.twitter.com/y9EDiJnm9n

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) February 18, 2026

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, which has organised the artificial intelligence event, had shared the DD News interview about the robot on social media.

On Wednesday, Professor Aishwarya Srivastava reiterated to Times Now that the university had never claimed to have manufactured it and “never tried to hide the logo of Go2” on the robot.

“It got misinterpreted and we humbly apologise,” Srivastava said. “[What] we were trying to say was that a part of the investment is in such kinds of products, which we are bringing from across the globe for our students to experience hands-on.”

Professor Neha Singh, who had made the claim on Monday, told PTI on Wednesday that “perhaps I did not communicate it properly” and that the “intent may not have been properly understood”.

Singh added that she did not have information about the university having been asked to vacate its kiosks. “What I know is that today we are all present here,” she said.

Later in the day, Galgotias University issued an apology for the “confusion created” at the summit.

“One of our representatives, manning the pavilion, was ill-informed,” the university stated. “She was not aware of the technical origins of the product and in her enthusiasm of being on camera, gave factually incorrect information even though she was not authorised to speak to the press.”

There was “no institutional intent to misrepresent this innovation”, it added.

“Understanding the organisers sentiment, we have vacated the premises,” said the university.

‘Disorganised PR spectacle’: Opposition

On Wednesday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the AI Impact Summit was a “disorganised PR spectacle”.

In a social media post, he said: “Instead of leveraging India’s talent and data, the AI summit is a disorganised PR spectacle – Indian data up for sale, Chinese products showcased.”

Gandhi also shared a post by the Congress, which said that the Narendra Modi government had caused “irreparable damage” to the country’s image.

The Opposition party said that the Union government had made India a “laughing stock” globally, adding that this was “brazenly shameless”.

“In the ongoing AI summit, Chinese robots are being displayed as our own,” it said on social media. “The Chinese media has mocked us. This is truly embarrassing for India...”

Chaos at the summit

Several participants attending the event on the first day, Monday, had complained on social media about the event having been mismanaged.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said that what could have been a showcase of India’s digital and artificial intelligence capabilities, had turned into “utter chaos and rank mismanagement by this ‘PR [public relations] hungry’ government”.

He listed exhibitors having been left without food and water, their products getting stolen, personal electronic devices being prohibited as among the reasons for the distress.

Dhananjay Yadav, co-founder of AI firm NeoSapien, said on Monday that the company’s wearable products displayed at the exhibition had been stolen after they had to be left unattended when security personnel asked his team to leave while they cordoned off the area for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit.

The devices were recovered by the police a day later, Yadav said.

On Tuesday, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw apologised for the problems faced by those attending the event.

The controversy involving Galgotias University showcasing a Chinese-manufactured robot dog as its own product on February 17 at the India AI Impact Summit underway in Delhi calls to mind how “greenwashing” by giant corporations has been expanded to the current hype, artificial intelligence.

Many years ago, multinational companies discovered that sustainability was a buzzword, even as they were destroying forests, polluting rivers and seas, and their executives were flying in to work on private jets. But they had to tell their customers, as well as regulators and society at large, that they cared about the environment.

So corporations began promoting paper straws and cloth bags. They bought carbon credits and installed some solar facilities on their premises. They led tree-planting drives in cities while stripping large swathes of the Amazon and Sumatran forests. This practice is now known as “greenwashing,” where companies exaggerate their commitments to sustainability and the environment.

Now, companies have discovered a new and analogous practice: AI-washing. Here, they exaggerate artificial intelligence capabilities, often at great cost to their customers, investors and even society.

Delhi: Professor of Galgotias University, Neha Singh says, "....Our university aligns with the Prime Minister’s vision and mission. We are working towards a Aatmanirbhar Bharat..." pic.twitter.com/a2tlVNYSvP

— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) February 18, 2026

AI in a ‘box’

About 250 years ago, a Hungarian inventor named Wolfgang Von Klempen claimed to have invented a chess-playing automaton. He called it the Mechanical Turk. It could play chess and beat even the best players. People were stunned by what seemed like the first instance of artificial intelligence. But the Mechanical Turk was a hoax. The box concealed a chess player inside who was making all the moves.

There are many instances of the Mechanical Turk in the 21st century.

As far back as 2016, viral videos of Amazon’s Go stores took social media by storm. A customer could walk into an unmanned store, pick up stuff and walk out – an AI algorithm would track the customer and their purchases, billing their Amazon account automatically.

But in 2024, it was found that the Go Stores were actually being monitored by call-centre workers in India. In 2024, an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the team in India “helps train the model” and that associates “validate a small minority of shopping visits”.

Similarly, everyone’s favourite tech guru Elon Musk showcased his amazing autonomous robots – Tesla’s Optimus – at the We Robot event 2024. The robots were later revealed to be remote-controlled by humans.

The case of a high-profile startup called Engineer.ai tells the same story. The founders promised to leverage the power of AI to help users build websites without any coding knowledge. In 2019, it was found that developers in India were doing the job, not AI.

A few years later, Engineer.ai rebranded itself as Builder.ai, attracted even more millions of dollars in funding, this time claiming it would use AI to speed up app development. The company filed for bankruptcy in late 2024.

The Go Store and Builder.ai fiascos were pulled off with low-paid workers based in India.

India aspires to be part of the global AI revolution, but instead are Indians being relegated to the dark back-alleys of the ecosystem?

AI India

AI is a major buzzword in India right now.

State governments and entrepreneurs are announcing AI initiatives by the dozen. AI universities are promising to change the face of higher education. AI-powered cities promise to end problems of homelessness, segregation and sprawl. There is AI in disaster management, tourism and public transport.

Almost every Indian state has unveiled ambitious AI roadmaps and signed memorandums of understanding with leading organisations and philanthropic trusts. The press releases brim with buzzwords and jargon, but many claims feel like puffery – for now.

Then there have also been the familiar problematic themes and scientifically-questionable use-cases of artificial intelligence. The Maharashtra government in January claimed that it will use AI to detect “illegal” immigrants from Bangladesh. Graduates of India’s best technical colleges are developing AI-powered astrology apps for the superstitious, at valuations running into crores of rupees.

Teenagers are turning to AI chat bots for psychological help and counselling, often with disastrous consequences. Lawyers are using generative AI tools to prepare briefs, citing fake cases.

Rather than innovation, AI has successfully enabled fraudulent endeavours.

AI-generated fake invoices are as good as genuine ones – the technology has helped effect a paradigm shift in corporate reimbursement fraud. Some enterprising Indians are now using AI-generated photos of flies and insects in food to get free meals from food delivery platforms.

AI-generated research papers of questionable quality are inundating the peer review teams of academic journals, while school teachers and college professors are grading AI-generated assignments submitted by students. Deep-fake videos using AI have taken fake news to a whole new level.

Meanwhile, serious AI researchers and builders are toiling away doing unglamorous math on chalk boards, writing blocks of code on their laptops, and presenting their niche research in academic conferences and boring academic journals.

When AI-washers and their gimmicks take over the narrative, they compete with genuine players for funds, resources and attention. As dancing robot dogs take over the public imagination, priorities shift as well.

To the layperson and often the policymaker and politician, there is little difference between the serious AI stakeholder and the blowhard. The two share the same forums and the same media outlets, and their opinions are often juxtaposed alongside one another.

AI-washing is not uniquely an Indian phenomenon. But just like India’s space scientists and IT service providers, there is a lot more to prove than western counterparts, simply to stake our claim to legitimacy. Maybe it is time for some deep introspection and to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Prithwiraj Mukherjee is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Amrut Mody School of Management, Ahmedabad University. Opinions expressed are his own, and do not reflect those of his employer.

The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that it was being “terrorised”, after the West Bengal government argued that the central agency had been “weaponised”, Live Law reported.

The remarks were made when a bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and KV Viswanathan was hearing a petition filed by the Enforcement Directorate against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and several West Bengal Police officers for allegedly obstructing its searches at the premises of political consultancy I-PAC on January 8.

The central agency had conducted searches at the political consultancy’s office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area, the home of its head Pratik Jain and the office of a trader in the city’s Posta neighbourhood as part of an investigation into alleged money laundering.

The Indian Political Action Committee has managed the Trinamool Congress’ election campaigns, including in the 2021 Assembly elections.

Banerjee had arrived at Jain’s home around noon while the search was underway and stayed for about 20 to 25 minutes. She then came out with a green file and claimed that the central agency’s officials were “taking away” party documents ahead of the Assembly elections.

The state is expected to head for elections in March or April.

After the raids, the Trinamool Congress and I-PAC moved the Calcutta High Court challenging the legality of the searches. The central agency also approached the High Court, alleging “illegal interference” during its search operations.

The Enforcement Directorate’s petition in the Supreme Court was filed under Article 32 of the Constitution, which grants individuals the right to move the top court for enforcement of their fundamental rights.

On Wednesday, advocate Sidharth Luthra, representing the West Bengal government, told the Supreme Court that the Enforcement Directorate “will have to justify how an agency can be weaponised like this”, Bar and Bench reported.

Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, representing the central agency, said in response: “No, agency is not weaponised. The agency has been terrorised.”

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Union government, also noted that the case involved an important principle related to Article 32, according to the legal news portal.

He was referring to the state government’s argument that the petition filed by the Enforcement Directorate under Article 32 was not maintainable. The state government has said that Article 32 was a remedy available to citizens against the government’s actions and cannot be invoked by a government agency such as the Enforcement Directorate.

The bench listed the matter for further hearing on March 18, Live Law reported.

At the last hearing in the Supreme Court on January 15, the bench had stayed the first information reports registered by the West Bengal Police against Enforcement Directorate officials in connection with the searches.

Issuing notice to Banerjee and the West Bengal Police officers on the petition filed by the central agency, the Supreme Court had said that the alleged interference of the state government in the searches was a “serious issue” that needed to be examined.

The Maharashtra government on Tuesday scrapped the process of providing caste verification and validation certificates to Muslims, formally closing a 2014 policy to provide 5% reservations to the community in jobs and education, reported The Hindu.

The quota had not been implemented due to legal hurdles. Hence, the order withdrawing the policy does not change the existing situation, but only terminates the grant of certificates to around 50 Muslim groups seeking benefits under the Special Backward Category-A framework.

In July 2014, the then Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government in the state announced 16% reservation for Marathas and 5% reservation for Muslims in government jobs and government-run educational institutions by placing them under a Socially and Educationally Backward Classes category, The Hindu reported.

The announcement was made ahead of the 2014 Assembly elections by then-minister Arif Naseem Khan.

The Muslim quota did not apply to the entire community. Instead, it covered around 50 identified socially and educationally backward Muslim communities, largely comprising occupational and artisan groups. Persons belonging to these communities were required to obtain caste and validity certificates similar to other backward class procedures, The Indian Express reported.

The 2014 ordinance was challenged before the Bombay High Court. During the hearing, the court struck down the implementation of the 5% reservation in jobs, but allowed reservation for Muslims in education, The Hindu reported.

However, the ordinance was not converted into a permanent law within the stipulated time frame and lapsed on December 23, 2014, after the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in the state. While the government pursued legal remedies to restore Maratha reservation, no legislative effort was made to preserve the Muslim quota framework, The Indian Express reported.

Once the ordinance lapsed, the 5% reservation in education also ceased to operate and the government resolutions issued under the ordinance gradually lost effect, the newspaper reported.

The latest government resolution formally revokes all directions and administrative processes linked to the earlier policy.

Opposition leaders have criticised the move. Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) spokesperson Clyde Crasto said the decision showed that the BJP-led government “does not value Muslim leaders of BJP and their allies”, The Hindu reported.

“So this order is unlikely to have much impact on ground,” The Indian Express quoted Shaikh as saying. “However, it sends a clear political message about the ruling government’s position on Muslim reservation and how strongly it opposes the idea that it is revoking government resolutions that are not even being implemented in the first place.”

Social Justice Minister Sanjay Shirsat defended the decision, stating that the earlier announcement was made ahead of elections without completing the necessary legal procedures, The Indian Express reported.

“The reservation was announced by the Congress in December 2014, just ahead of the elections as a way to appease the Muslim community for votes,” The Indian Express quoted Shirsat as saying. “Since it was merely an appeasement move and the mandatory process was not followed through, the present development has taken place.”

Meghalaya Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong on Tuesday said that the state government deported 194 Bangladeshi nationals out of 658 prosecuted since 2021 as part of a drive against “illegal” migration, The Hindu reported.

Speaking in the Assembly, Tynsong said that action had been taken against these Bangladeshi nationals who entered Meghalaya “illegally” between 2021 and February 3.

“The 194 were deported after they completed their sentences, and travel permits were secured from the Bangladeshi authorities,” The Hindu quoted Tynsong, who also holds the home (police) portfolio, as saying.

He added that a “multi-layered mechanism” had been put in place to check infiltration. As part of it, 18 check posts, entry gates and a land customs station had been established along vulnerable stretches of the state’s border with Assam and Bangladesh.

Meghalaya shares a 443-km border with Bangladesh. Of this, 76 km remains unfenced.

Tynsong also noted that a state-level monitoring committee was overseeing the implementation of the anti-infiltration measures, The Hindu reported.

Action was taken against undocumented immigrants under provisions of the 2016 Meghalaya Resident Safety and Security Act, the 2005 Immigration and Foreigners’ Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, he added.

This comes against the backdrop of several persons being forced into Bangladesh since April 2025 after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after the state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.

Former Assam Congress chief Bhupen Borah, who resigned from the party on February 16, confirmed on Tuesday that he will join the Bharatiya Janata Party, The Indian Express reported.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who visited Borah’s home on Tuesday, said that he will join the BJP on February 22, The Hindu reported. The chief minister said that the BJP will field Borah in the upcoming Assembly elections in the state.

Assam is expected to head for Assembly elections in April or May.

Sarma described Borah as the “last recognised Hindu leader” in the Congress. “His joining will completely create a perception, which is a reality too, that the Congress is no longer a party of Assamese mainstream people,” The Indian Express quoted the chief minister as saying.

Sarma said that when a leader quits the party after working for it for 32 years, the party should look into the reasons for it. “The problem with the Congress is that it does not address such issues,” he added.

The chief minister recalled that he and Borah had joined the Congress around the same period in the early 1990s. Sarma left the Congress in 2015, and subsequently joined the BJP.

After Borah submitted his resignation to the Congress leadership on Monday, senior leaders, including Rahul Gandhi tried to convince him to change his decision. The former Assam Congress chief had sought time till Tuesday to reconsider his exit, but eventually maintained his decision.

Borah claimed on Tuesday that decision-making in the Assam Congress had been concentrated in the hands of Dhubri MP Rakibul Hussain, The Indian Express reported.

“The APCC [Assam Pradesh Congress Committee] is now APCC-R, which is difficult for me,” he was quoted as saying. “I want to be part of APCC, but not APCC-R. It’s like a faction of a party.”

He claimed that Hussain was responsible for the Congress’ alliance with the All India United Democratic Front in 2021. He also questioned the Congress’ decision to field Hussain’s son Tanzil for the bye-election to the Samaguri seat in November 2024, according to The Indian Express.

The Congress lost the Muslim-majority seat to the BJP’s Diplu Ranjan Sarmah.

In his resignation letter, Borah claimed that he had been ignored by the party leadership, and that he was concerned about the party’s future.

Borah was the president of the Congress’ Assam unit between 2021 and 2025. He was replaced by Gaurav Gogoi in June.

Borah had been tasked, just days earlier, with taking forward talks for a proposed alliance against the BJP, involving parties such as the Raijor Dol, the Asom Jatiyo Parishad, the All Party Hill Leaders Conference, the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday invited Bangladesh’s new Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to visit India.

Tarique Rahman took oath as the prime minister on Tuesday, four days after his Bangladesh Nationalist Party won the national election. The polls were the first since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted in August 2024.

The invitation from Modi was handed over to Tarique Rahman by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, who represented India at the swearing-in ceremony in Dhaka.

In the letter, Modi congratulated the BNP chief for winning the election.

“Your victory is a testimony to the trust and confidence reposed by the people of Bangladesh in your leadership and their mandate for your vision to take the country forward on the path of peace, stability and prosperity,” Modi said.

Just concluded a constructive meeting with Prime Minister of Bangladesh @trahmanbnp

I handed over a personal letter from Prime Minister @narendramodi conveying his wishes to PM Rahman and inviting him to visit India at the earliest convenience.

I extended warm congratulations… pic.twitter.com/gFNqLmnxsT

— Om Birla (@ombirlakota) February 17, 2026

The Indian prime minister said that India and Bangladesh have a “deep-rooted friendship founded on shared history, cultural ties”, and that the “strong convergence between our respective developmental priorities shall serve as a guiding principle for future cooperation”.

India and Bangladesh can become catalysts for each other’s sustainable growth, and work for each other’s security and enable mutual prosperity, Modi told Rahman.

Tarique Rahman is the son of former President Ziaur Rahman and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who died on December 30.

Relations between India and Bangladesh had seen periods of frostiness during the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s previous government from 2001 to 2006. The party was earlier widely viewed as having an anti-India stance.

Also read: A reminder: BNP coming to power in Bangladesh was once the worst-case scenario for Delhi

Indian foreign secretary meets Bangladeshi Opposition leader

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri on Tuesday met Bangladeshi Leader of Opposition Shafiqur Rahman, who heads the Jamaat-e-Islami.

The Indian High Commission said it was a courtesy meeting that took place on the sidelines of Tarique Rahman’s swearing-in ceremony.

Misri reaffirmed India’s “enduring support to Bangladesh, underscoring the people-centric nature of the ties”, the High Commission said.

During the meeting, Shafiqur Rahman highlighted the “deep civilisational bonds shared by the two countries and expressed hope for stronger bilateral relations”, it added.

New Delhi-Dhaka thaw?

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party had invited Modi, along with the heads of government of 12 countries, to Rahman’s swearing-in ceremony. However, Birla and Misri represented India as Modi had meetings scheduled with French President Emmanuel Macron in Mumbai.

India’s participation at the ceremony came amid strained ties between New Delhi and Dhaka after Hasina had fled to India in August 2024 after several weeks of widespread student-led protests against her Awami League government.

Bangladesh has repeatedly demanded that India extradite Hasina after a tribunal in that country sentenced her to death for alleged crimes against humanity. Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal held Hasina guilty of having ordered a deadly crackdown on the protests against her government.

In December, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that it was for Hasina to decide whether she wanted to return to Bangladesh.

Relations between India and Bangladesh further strained in recent months amid unrest following the death of student leader Sharif Osman Bin Hadi on December 18. Hadi had been a prominent figure in the 2024 protests that led to the ouster of the Hasina government.

His death triggered protests, vandalism and attacks in Bangladesh. Several attacks on minority communities had also been reported in Bangladesh, which led to demonstrations in India.

However, Modi was among the first global leaders to congratulate Rahman on his party’s victory. In a social media post, he “reaffirmed India’s continued commitment to the peace, progress and prosperity of both our peoples”.

In response, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Saturday said it was looking forward to “engaging constructively” with New Delhi to advance the bilateral relationship.

Read Scroll’s ground reports from Bangladesh here.

India and France on Tuesday upgraded their bilateral relations to the “special global strategic partnership”

The two governments renewed an agreement for defence cooperation and agreed to set up a joint advanced technology development group to explore opportunities to co-develop emerging and critical technologies “in identified niche areas to retain a competitive military edge, and mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities”.

India and France have been strategic partners since 1998, allowing them to cooperate in sensitive sectors such as defence, security and technology.

The decisions were announced following talks in Mumbai between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron.

The two leaders inaugurated a final assembly line for the H125 helicopters at Vemagal, Karnataka. The facility will be operated by Indian firm Tata Advanced Systems and French aerospace company Airbus, a joint statement between the two countries said.

New Delhi and Paris also announced a joint venture between Indian state-owned Bharat Electronics Limited and French defence and security firm Safran to produce HAMMER modular air-to-ground missiles in India, and reciprocal deployment of officers at Indian Army and French Land Forces establishments.

The two countries also agreed to amend protocols on the double tax avoidance pact.

Modi and Macron reaffirmed their commitment to cooperate on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, a planned infrastructure project aimed at boosting connectivity between the three regions.

At a press meeting alongside Modi, Macron said on Tuesday that India is among France’s most trusted partners. “From Rafale jets to submarines…we are expanding defence cooperation,” he said.

The comments came less than a week after the Indian government’s Defence Acquisition Council on February 12 approved proposals to buy several military equipment, including additional Rafale fighter jets for the Indian Air Force.

The majority of the Rafale aircraft being ordered will be manufactured in India, the defence ministry had said.

While the defence ministry did not state the number of Rafales being purchased, news reports widely said it would be 114, with 90 of them being manufactured in India. Some of the remaining jets are likely to be acquired in fly-away condition to meet the Air Force’s immediate operational needs.

The Air Force already operates the Rafales. The deal to procure 36 of them was signed in 2016 at a cost of Rs 58,000 crore.

In April, India had signed a deal with France to buy 26 Rafale Marine fighter aircraft for the Indian Navy at a cost of about Rs 64,000 crore. The Rafale Marine is an aircraft carrier-borne fighter jet.

Modi accepted Macron’s invitation for India to participate in the Group of Seven Summit that France will host this year, the joint statement said.

Macron will travel to Delhi on Wednesday for a summit on artificial intelligence.

Kanhaiya Kumar looks back at the sedition case that took Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University by storm in February 2016 and put him in jail for 20 days with tremendous clarity.

“I can say this with confidence now that the government and the deep state created this design,” he told Scroll. “It was meant to capture the university and criminalise dissent.”

Kumar, who was the president of the JNU students’ union at that time, is now in charge of the Congress party’s student wing.

In the decade since the 2016 controversy, he has contested and lost two elections. In 2019, he was fielded by the Communist Party of India as its Lok Sabha candidate from Begusarai, Bihar. Two years later, he exited the CPI, which he had come into association with as a teenager, to join Congress.

He lost another Lok Sabha election in the summer of 2024, this time from Delhi.

Despite his back-to-back electoral defeats, Kumar remains a prominent political figure in the Hindi belt, where he is loved and hated in equal measure. His oratory has won him many admirers, but his politics continues to draw polarising reactions.

Scroll interviewed the young politician as part of a special series marking 10 years of the JNU sedition row. He responded to questions about the criticisms that have loomed over his choices after 2016 with candour.

Asked why he has embraced a political role that does not quite utilise his gift of the gab, he said: “Nothing changes by talking. Things will change through our actions.”

Edited excerpts from the conversation:

You were not present at the JNU event that turned controversial on February 9, 2016. In fact, your old friends told me that you spoke passionately against azaadi on a visit to Kashmir back in 2012. What was that about?

I was one of many student-cum-activists from JNU and Delhi University who went for that trip. I had said there that when you fling stones in protest, they hit the children of the country’s poor farmers and workers while those making policies are doing so in the comfort of five-star hotels.

Those who have guns in their hands are also children of the poor and so are those flinging stones at them. The issue that unites them both is unemployment. My position on this has been clear for a long time.

Problems are the same everywhere. Even in Kashmir, I saw people struggling a lot because of unemployment. Tourism also keeps getting disrupted. Their anger is justified. But us-versus-them politics does not unite people. It only provokes them.

So how did you end up getting embroiled in the 2016 sedition case?

At first, I also found this strange because I belong to a freedom fighter’s family. There are only soldiers, teachers and nurses in my whole clan.

I was always opposed to secessionist politics. There will always be differences in our experiences. But we are, after all, human beings. That is what appeals to me. So I found it quite strange that I was being called a secessionist, a member of the “tukde-tukde” gang and a traitor.

Later, it all became very obvious. It began as an onslaught on universities. First, an attempt was made to change the directors of the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Film and Television Institute of India.

Then, in 2015, we started the protest against the University Grants Commission, during which the Rohith Vemula incident took place. If you remember, terms like anti-national were first coined then. The ruling dispensation had started pushing this narrative from then itself.

I can say this with confidence now that the government and the deep state created this design. It was meant to capture the university and criminalise dissent. If you oppose their idea of India, you are a traitor.

One of your teachers told me that during the 20 days that you spent in prison, you prepared every line of the speech you delivered after coming out. He even boasted that if Hindutva supporters knew you from before, they would have deferred their plans to attack JNU by a year or two.

They succeeded in their task later. They corrected the mistakes they made in 2015 and 2016. Today, they have successfully divided society and university. But back then, in both the Rohith Vemula case and the JNU sedition case, they had to accept defeat.

You can still check Rohith Vemula’s Facebook page. He shared my speech [from the 2015 JNU students’ union elections] saying a new leader has been born. When politics comes into your life organically through experience, your response is not a manufactured one. It, too, is organic. And any organic response cannot be disconnected from society easily.

I would keep asking people in JNU to avoid using jargon. When we talk, we should try to make someone sitting in Port Blair a stakeholder in what we are saying. The question of language is linked to the question of experience. Those who came from experience responded to the government’s attacks in a way that was not disconnected from society.

After 2016, a very big section from JNU left Delhi altogether and settled in different parts of the country. Dozens of student-activists who would have otherwise got jobs in Delhi University or JNU easily before had to leave the city.

In that famous speech that you delivered after coming out, you spoke about bringing Ambedkarites and leftists together to defeat Hindutva. Do you still believe in that?

Yes. I am still trying to do that. All constitutional forces have to come together for the emancipation of the toiling masses. Gandhi, Ambedkar, Bhagat Singh, Birsa Munda, Kabir, Guru Nanak are all part of one tradition.

In political science, it is called Shramanic thought and defined in opposition to the Brahmanic tradition. Shramanic thought is rooted in rationality and scientific temper. All proponents of that tradition have to come together.

Leftist here does not necessarily mean someone from the Communist Party. AB Bardhan [Communist Party leader] once said that all forces standing in opposition to power are leftists. He identified three strong leftist traditions in India: communist, socialist and Ambedkarite.

I, too, believe in uniting these forces. That is why I came into the Congress party. Rahul Gandhi is trying to do exactly this. I thought instead of living in small nests of our own, we should all come under one roof.

My fight has not changed. How can it? Since 2014, the situation has only gotten worse. The right-wing assault on the country is moving ahead with greater force today. The number of people speaking up against it has slowly reduced.

But opposition among the people has become stronger. The masses are turning against the government without influencers. They are getting influenced by the policies of those currently in power. I find this interesting.

Would you say that this is a new development?

Yes. After 2019, my use of social media has been very minimal. Earlier, I was very aggressive there. I have also cut down on delivering speeches at rallies. Instead, I started roaming among the people more often.

The yatras I took part in were very crucial in this process. I have made five yatras in the last six years. By going among the people, I understood the limitations of social media outrage. Everything there is to say has already been said.

Are you saying there is nothing new left to say and that political work needs to be done on the ground now?

Yes. That is what I am trying to do instead of speaking at rallies or posting on Twitter.

There is no way to delete anything that you say on social media. Your digital footprint will always be there. So instead of saying something quickly, we should try to say the right thing.

You can say what you have to say 10 days later, too. It’s possible that after those 10 days, you will not consider it important to say that thing.

The other thing I understood is that I have said whatever I have to say. Nothing changes by talking. Things will change through our actions. So it is a political decision to use social media less. One downside of that is I am constantly accused of not speaking about this or that [laughs].

But many people who have observed you for a while believe that your talents as an orator could have been put to better use if you were out there more often. What do you make of this criticism?

I am constantly receiving this criticism from people who are very close to me. To be honest, I have not come to a concrete conclusion about this yet.

Long ago, even before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, I tried recording videos with NewsClick. I realised then that I am not an orator without the masses. My style is conversational. But when you record something, you are talking to a screen. I am not made for that.

If I keep talking in public all the time, I will not be saying the right things. You have to understand what my primary work is. I am not a cartoonist, a blogger, a YouTuber or someone who makes reels. I am primarily a political worker. My work is organising people.

The Congress party has put you in charge of the National Students’ Union of India, its student wing. How do you see your work?

I am getting to learn a lot because I meet early-career Congress workers. I get to know what their insecurities are, what their fears are, what they want to achieve, what motivates them and how they navigate politics.

I also get to learn from their vocabulary. NSUI leaders are “leaders”. It shows in their language. For example, we used to call ourselves and others around us “students” even though we were leaders. NSUI leaders refer to other students as “children”.

Those of us who come from activist backgrounds struggle to call ourselves “leaders” even after we become leaders. We prefer euphemisms like activist and social worker [laughs]. But NSUI is full of “leaders”. So I am understanding this difference in political culture.

In a way, this makes NSUI leaders more genuine. They lack sophistication. Everything is raw and blunt here. I have seen hypocrisy very closely during my days in activism. People fighting fascism would get upset over the order in which they were invited to speak at a public event.

It took me some time to sink into the NSUI role fully. I did not want to carry the tag of a student leader all my life. Eventually, I understood that there is a difference. Here I am not a player, but a coach. Through different means like training, I am trying to promote those from activist backgrounds and induct new ideas in the NSUI.

Your party has made you a senior observer for the upcoming Assembly elections in Kerala, where the contest is primarily between the Congress and the Left. Does that make you uncomfortable, given your past?

Once you have decoded the nature of power, you don’t find it difficult to understand this dichotomy. If it is indeed a leftist government, how did Adani get a port [Vizhinjam] there? Somebody was telling me that whenever they go to Kerala and spot pictures of Pinarayi Vijayan everywhere, they see Modi in a mundu.

Do you agree with that description?

You can go see it yourself. If I give myself the name Insaan Singh and start beating every insaan [human being in Hindi] I find out there, will you fixate on my name or will you see what I am doing? I have no confusion about this.

I understand the difference between a government led by a Left party and a leftist government. I also know very well that I will always be attacked by both sides because of my politics. I just have to recognise who the Savarkar and Jinnah of today are.

The BJP uses the nation, army and religion to abuse me. They [the Left] will use ideology to call me a sellout, an opportunist and mock me for travelling in an expensive car. Their morality begins there. Their hypocrisy is well-known to me.

I feel no urgent pressure to prove that I am right. I will be proven right 50 years later.

I will go there [Kerala] and oppose the state government’s policies. I will not oppose Marx, Lenin or leftist ideology. It is a government led by a Left party, yet it is working against left principles. So I will speak against it.

Have your views on the politics of hate changed since you left the Communist Party of India?

Hegemony needs hate like a crop needs water and fertiliser. There can be no otherisation without hate. A permanent enemy is always needed. Muslims have become that enemy in this country. They are being made to answer for events that take place outside India, too.

You have to understand what identity politics does in this situation. That is why I said I have identified both Savarkar and Jinnah of today. Some Muslims link themselves to a global identity. So when something happens in a different part of the world, it is used as a basis to spread against them here. This is by design.

The whole country burns in the fire of hatred while forests are cut down, mines are looted, ports and airports are sold off, farmer suicides increase. All these questions disappear. To take attention away from them, hatred is necessary.

Do you think BJP is winning only because of Hindu-Muslim? Anybody who thinks so is absolutely stupid. The BJP uses Muslims where they are present in big numbers. Where there are fewer Muslims, it demonises a dominant caste group like the Jats in Haryana. It pushes caste through WhatsApp far more than it pushes Hindu-Muslim on television.

Fear and hatred are the two planks of its politics. Hindu-Muslim is mostly part of its national syllabus, but at the state-level it uses other identities. It sows division in society and diverts our attention to continue staying in power.

One peculiar thing about your interviews with the Godi media is that they keep asking you about your relationship with Umar Khalid.

It is a good thing. At least that way, the country gets a reminder that somebody has been in jail for over five years.

You often respond by listing the names of other political prisoners.

I do that because they are trying something else. I have already told you about the Savarkar-Jinnah binary. They want to create an Umar-versus-Kanhaiya debate. And many social media accounts with Muslim names amplify this. They try to pit Umar and me against each other.

They say that Umar got caught up in this mess because he has an Urdu name. But so many people with Hindi names are also in jail. Those who think like this don’t understand fascism. Yes, fascism wanted Jews dead. But it also wanted non-Jews defending the Jews dead. If you forget that, you are underestimating the threat of fascism.

But is the Godi media interested in understanding fascism? They keep asking you if you betrayed Umar.

I think about this often [laughs]. I will consider this important if Umar comes out of prison and says that I betrayed him.

I’m fine with the Godi media asking me this question because I cannot give up the mainstream space. They keep trying to divert attention to other issues and I keep trying to use that space for putting forward my thoughts on the issues I care about.

This question comes up from both sides, though. Today’s Savarkar and Jinnah are both in on this scheme. You have to understand how the BJP uses Muslims like fodder for its politics. It is very natural for Muslims to feel hurt. But when somebody is hurt, they can be used emotionally in political conspiracies.

I don’t have any saviour complex. I no longer feel like I need to do something for someone else. All I have is my sense of duty. Life has put me in this situation. I just have to be authentic.

I don’t want to go out of my way to show that I am pro-this or pro-that. But I have to keep doing what I think is right.

I cannot take some positions because if I don’t, somebody will get upset. If I start doing that to fight one form of communalism, I will end up compromising with another kind of communalism. I am not going to do that.

If I have betrayed Umar, the onus is on him to say so, and not those who are speaking on his behalf. Why should I say something? Let the eyewitnesses of the incident that happened on February 9, 2016 speak up.

One of those people told me that you went up to them and said, “Just leave. I’ll manage the rest.”

I was clear that I was the president of all 8,000 students irrespective of whether they voted for me or not. The attack was on our university so I had to stay there and face it.

But this person told me that you did what you did as a friend, and not just as the president.

My personal is also political. I am the way I am. There is no pretence. That is why when a narrative or an attack against me is manufactured, it does not affect me for very long.

So why did you not attend the press conference in September 2020 after Umar was arrested?

I was in the Communist Party of India then. D Raja [general secretary of CPI] himself was representing our party there. You have to follow party protocol sometimes. I have to do that in the Congress, too.

I am told that you are still in touch with Umar’s close friends.

I am saying that one community is being demonised and it is under attack. I come from the majority community and majoritarian politics is happening all around us. The onus on me is to speak up when something wrong is happening with the community that is under attack. This is my public responsibility. My personal relationships are not related to that.

Even Gandhi supported the Khilafat movement. I have found clarity on this. I will follow Gandhi. Those with Urdu names have to decide who will be today’s Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

I am with those who are ready to be Azad. I am even willing to accept their leadership and walk behind them. But they have to take this position.

The Muslims who stayed behind in India are those who listened to Azad and rejected what Jinnah was saying. So if somebody is doing Jinnah’s politics, I am not bothered by them. This is part of the BJP’s design. The media does it for eyeballs.

My friendship with Umar was forged in struggle even though we always differed ideologically. Whenever he comes out of prison, we will work against the BJP together.

As far as the question of going to jail is concerned, that is a communitarian question. Minorities are being demonised in this country. Umar is not alone. Sharjeel Imam is also in jail. He wrote articles against me and campaigned for my opponent in Begusarai. So should I say it is right to keep him behind bars? Never.

Umar has been in jail for five years. What can one even say? What can be worse than taking away five crucial years from somebody’s life? So when accusations are levelled against me about this, I just listen quietly. It will not look nice if I respond.

The Bengaluru Police filed a case against the convenor and co-convenor of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Assam unit for an artificial intelligence-generated video showing Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma symbolically firing at two Muslim men, The Indian Express reported on Tuesday.

The first information report was registered on February 12 on a complaint filed by a Congress member in Karnataka saying that the video uploaded by the Assam BJP had objectionable and potentially provocative content that could disturb public peace and promote enmity between communities, the newspaper reported.

The February 7 video clip posted on social media platform X combined what appeared to be original footage of the chief minister handling rifles with artificial intelligence-generated images portraying Muslims as targets. On-screen text included slogans such as “Foreigner free Assam”, “No mercy”, “Why did you not go to Pakistan?” and “There is no forgiveness to Bangladeshis”.

Following criticism, the video was deleted.

“Given the official nature of the handle and its large number of followers, the visual imagery combined with the caption conveys an intimidating and provocative message, normalising and glorifying targeted violence against specific religious minorities,” The Indian Express quoted the complaint as saying.

It alleged that the video had the “potential to instil fear and vulnerability in members of the Muslim community and incite hatred and possible violence in certain sections of the public”.

The FIR named Biswajit Khaund and Ron Bikash Gourav, who managed the BJP Assam unit's X account, the newspaper reported.

They were charged under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to provocation with intent to cause riot and circulation of false information, rumours or reports intended to incite hatred or ill-will between groups.

The investigation into the matter was underway, the police was quoted as having said.

On February 12, Assam BJP claimed that the post was “immature” and “unauthorised”. One of the four co-convenors of the BJP’s state social media cell had been removed from his position in connection with the video.

On February 11, Sarma said that an FIR had been filed in Assam as well in connection with the video.

Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Tuesday apologised for the problems faced by those attending the India AI Impact Summit in Delhi, ANI reported.

The information technology minister said at a press conference that corrective measures had been taken after the difficulties faced by participants during the opening session on Monday, in order to ensure a smoother experience.

The summit began on Monday and will conclude on Friday.

Vaishnaw said that the event was the biggest artificial intelligence summit and that public response had been “phenomenal”. About 70,000 persons attended the event on Tuesday, he said.

“We can see the organisation is very smooth now,” Vaishnaw claimed. “If anybody faced any problems yesterday, we apologise for that.”

He said that a “war room” had been set up to address participants’ grievances and operational problems.

The event is being organised by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

Several world leaders, including the presidents of France, Brazil, Estonia, the prime ministers of Spain, Greece, the Netherlands, Mauritius and Bhutan, and officials from major technology companies are scheduled to attend the event.

Several participants attending the event on Monday had complained on social media about the event having been mismanaged.

Day 1 of the AI Impact Summit turned to be a pain for us.

I came genuinely excited, it was the first time the summit was being hosted in India, and I wanted to show up personally to support the ecosystem and the government’s push.

But what happened next was shocking.

At 12… pic.twitter.com/9gVygparq0

— Dhananjay Yadav (@imDhananjay) February 16, 2026

Congress criticises ‘utter chaos’

Earlier on Tuesday, Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge said that what could have been a showcase of India’s digital and artificial intelligence capabilities, had turned into “utter chaos and rank mismanagement by this ‘PR [public relations] hungry’ government”.

Founders, exhibitors and visitors faced “extreme distress due to the PM gate-crashing for a photo opportunity”, Kharge said on social media.

He listed exhibitors having been left without food and water, their products getting stolen, personal electronic devices being prohibited as among the reasons for the distress.

“It is extremely unfortunate that our country has to suffer this global embarrassment due to the incompetency of our own government,” Kharge said.

In the month of December, Tamil Nadu saw a spate of attacks on migrant workers that left many alarmed.

On December 15, a carpenter from Uttar Pradesh working in Coimbatore was stabbed by two local men while at a bakery. According to news reports, the locals initiated a conversation with the worker – when he responded in Hindi, an argument broke out and the two men attacked him with a knife. The incident garnered considerable attention after CCTV footage of it went viral.

Other attacks in other parts of the state followed. On December 27, a man from Odisha was attacked by four intoxicated juveniles near the railway headquarters in Tiruvallur district. Police said that the group entered into an argument with the victim and then attacked him with a sickle.

On December 29, a migrant worker from West Bengal died in Coimbatore after a local auto driver punched him following an altercation between them, causing him to fall and hit his head. And on December 30, two migrant workers from Odisha were attacked by two drunk men in Sivaganga district.

In all but the first incident, police stated that the victims were not attacked because of their identities, but more likely as a result of unrelated altercations.

Nevertheless, the sudden spate of incidents raised some fears among workers that the state might be seeing a growing anti-migrant sentiment, particularly worrying in light of the fact that the state has had a large migrant worker population for many years.

According to the 2011 census, 34.87 lakh people had migrated to the state for employment. The Tamil Nadu government is currently carrying out a survey to determine the number of migrant workers in the state, but estimated that there were around 35 lakh in the state as of 2025. The number of workers officially registered in the state’s Interstate Migrant Workers portal, however, is only around 14 lakh.

Francis Bosco, an activist who works with migrant labourers in Tamil Nadu, said that all workers in the state’s informal and unorganised sectors are vulnerable, but that interstate migrant workers were particularly so. “They are more vulnerable because one, this is not their home, they are not familiar with anybody here and secondly, language barriers also cause difficulties,” he said.

In early January, in the aftermath of these incidents, Scroll spoke to more than 20 migrant workers in Coimbatore to learn about their experience of working in Tamil Nadu, and the fears they lived with, of facing discrimination or even attacks from locals.

Hostile comments, questions

Most migrant workers said that they were grateful just to have a job, and had not had unpleasant experiences in the city. “Most people are nice and even though we don’t know the language, we communicate politely,” said Manoj, a worker from Uttar Pradesh who had been in the district for around a year.

“We have never had any problems,” said Suhail, who has been in Coimbatore for 25 years.

Some, however, said that they encountered an undercurrent of hostility from locals. Among those we spoke to was Anwar, a friend of the worker who died in the December 29 incident in Coimbatore. Anwar, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym, said that his friend had moved to the city only a month earlier – his death had left Anwar in shock.

He explained that he himself had not faced any serious incidents of discrimination, but that he did sometimes encounter hostile situations in the city. “My employers and colleagues are nice people,” he said. “But sometimes, if I go to the shop to buy something, I’ll hear comments about how North Indians come to Tamil Nadu and take away jobs from locals.”

He added, “They’ll say it in Tamil assuming I won’t understand, but I do.”

Such comments left him feeling uncomfortable. “We are all here just to earn enough to have a proper meal, that’s all,” he said.

Other workers echoed these sentiments and said they, too, faced occasional unwelcome comments and questions. One, from Assam, who works at a clothes shop, said that he had predominantly had a good experience in the city, but that he is sometimes asked questions such as, “Why are you coming here to work?” or “Do you not have jobs in your hometown, and so have come to take ours?”

“These questions are asked mostly in jest, but I sometimes feel bad,” he said.

A vendor from Uttar Pradesh, who moved to the city two months ago, said he was unhappy about his move because of the treatment he faced from locals. The vendor, who sells shawls and dupattas at one of the city’s busiest shopping areas, said he frequently felt targeted by customers and other vendors.

“Because I don’t know Tamil, sometimes customers will take advantage. Young boys will speak very rudely to me and pay me less than agreed,” he said. “Other vendors will make me move from where I’m standing, even though it doesn’t affect their business.”

The vendor found that those he encountered often pointedly treated locals better than him. “When it’s raining and I stand near one of the big shops to try to stay dry, the shop keeper won’t allow me to stand there,” he said. “But he will allow local vendors to stand.”

Government measures

Activists and experts noted that on paper, there were some provisions in place for the protection of the workers.

For instance, Bosco noted that the central government passed the Interstate Migrant Workers Act in 1979, which contains provisions to protect workers across the country – it mandates, for instance, that migrant workers receive the same pay as local workers, and that employers provide suitable housing and medical facilities to them. But he noted that the act has not been implemented properly in most places, including Tamil Nadu. “The act has some good rules but it is not being followed,” he said.

The Tamil Nadu government has also put in place some protections for workers, which also extend to migrant workers. Chief among these is the Tamil Nadu Manual Workers (Construction Workers) Welfare Scheme, 1994, which mandates that the government meet the funeral expenses of a deceased worker and provide assistance to the family, such as for the education and marriages of children. In 2023, the government modified the scheme to introduce a compensation of Rs 5 lakh compensation for any deaths that occurred at construction sites, as well as to provide support for the body to be transported to the worker’s home. In 2025, this amount was increased to Rs 8 lakh. The Tamil Nadu Constructions Workers Welfare Board and the Tamil Nadu Public Health Department has also set up 50 mobile health clinics for workers.

Also in 2023, the Tamil Nadu government launched a portal for migrant workers employed in places like shops, commercial establishments, hotels and restaurants. Workers could register on the portal to avail of government benefits.

Further, the government has set up Migration Support Centres, which are “walk-in resource centres for migrant workers from other districts and states in search of better employment prospects”. Among the services these centres offer are counselling, access to information and “acclimatisation support”.

The government also has a helpline for migrant workers. Bosco noted that the helpline was introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the migrant population finally became “visible”. “But I don’t think it is very functional,” he said. “I don’t know any workers who have used the helpline.”

Overall, Bosco argued, despite the existence of several schemes and measures for their benefit, many migrant workers needed more support to be able to access government help. “There aren’t any migrant workers unions,” he said.

As a result of this lack of organisational support, activists said, many workers do not take the necessary steps to access government benefits for which they are eligible.

Many, for instance, hesitate to register themselves on the government portal. Sara Abraham, a lawyer and activist who has worked with migrant workers in the state, noted that many were also hesitant to participate in the state government’s ongoing survey of their population. “They may not feel comfortable giving all their information to the government, the same way that we feel uncomfortable with it,” she said.

Employers, in turn, also often avoid registering their employees with the government portal. “They don’t want to do it because the whole system of labour recruitment runs informally and outside the existing legal requirements,” Abraham said. “Registration would mean that workers would be able to prove an employer-employee relationship, they could demand an 8-hour day, minimum wages and overtime, and benefits like provident fund, as mandated by law.”

Bosco noted that local workers “will protest, shout and have other support to insist that they be paid, or given holidays or any other facilities”.

In contrast, Abraham argued, “migrant workers don’t have that kind of bargaining power”.

Activists said that among the key measures the government could take to better support migrant workers were the appointment of more labour inspectors to ensure the registration of workers and safer working environments, and the provision of public housing for workers and families.

Further, since migrant workers faced high rates of injuries, and have to frequently navigate the public hospital system, Abraham suggested that the government consider appointing dedicated translators and social workers at the hospitals.

Bosco argued that the workers’ home states also had a role to play in their welfare. “The source state and the destination state should also sign an MoU, because both states need to take responsibility of the workers,” Bosco said. “There should be somebody from the source state’s labour department at the destination state, so migrant workers feel they can rely on someone for help.”

Workers’ precautions

In light of the risks they faced of being targeted, workers said they had learnt to be cautious.

“During my field work in Chennai, Nepali-origin workers said that they prefer taking autos to buses, which I found to be very odd, because it was so much cheaper to take the bus,” Abraham said. “But they were self-conscious for looking different, and felt intimidated around local crowds.”

Workers echoed this observation. “We know that whatever it is, this is not our home,” Manoj said. “So we try not to get into fights or arguments with any local person.”

Pramod, another migrant worker, said that in his experience, it was often drunk men who picked on them. “ But we try not to get triggered,” he said. “We will inform the police or someone else will intervene.”

One worker, from Assam, who works at a foundry in Coimbatore, said that overall he had not faced any trouble. “The place I work at is great, we have good employers and we don’t really go out into the city too much, so there’s less chance of interactions,” he said. “I’ve never had any negative experiences, people have always been nice.”

But, he added that he had come across the video of the December 15 attack and that it had left him worried. “Such incidents should not happen. Migrant workers should feel protected, they should take strong action. I was a little concerned when I saw the video,” he said. “So my friends and I decided that it is best for us to travel in groups and not travel alone anywhere.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday verbally observed that political parties must foster fraternity and adhere to constitutional morality, reported Live Law.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices BV Nagarathna and Joymalya Bagchi was hearing a writ petition seeking guidelines to prevent “constitutionally unbecoming” speeches by government representatives.

The plea was filed by a group of 12 citizens, including former civil servants, diplomats, academicians and members of civil society.

It came against the backdrop of recent speeches by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and a now-deleted social media post by the BJP’s Assam unit. The post contained a video depicting Sarma symbolically firing at images of two Muslim men at close range.

During the hearing, Kant observed that the petition appeared to be “definitely targeted against a particular individual” as it referred only to Sarma’s speeches, Live Law reported. He held that some individuals had been “chosen selectively”, “conveniently ignoring others”.

“This is not acceptable,” Live Law quoted Kant as saying. “They [the petitioners] should be fair.”

Advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioners, clarified that no specific relief was being sought against Sarma and said references to him would be deleted.

He also urged the court to examine the broader constitutional issue, the legal news outlet reported.

“We need to do something,” Live Law quoted Sibal as saying. “This is becoming very toxic. This petition is not qua any individual.”

The chief justice suggested that the petitioners withdraw their plea and file a fresh application focused on constitutional principles. “Let the petitioners not create an impression that they are against a particular party or individual,” Live Law quoted Kant as saying.

Nagarathna also remarked that “there should be restraint from all sides”.

“Political leaders must ultimately foster fraternity in the country,” Live Law quoted Nagarathna as saying.

Sibal agreed to modify the petition. He also submitted that problematic speeches are often made before the Model Code of Conduct comes into force, but continue to circulate online during elections.

The Election Commission will not act since the speeches were made before the elections were declared, the advocate was quoted as saying.

The code is a set of guidelines issued by the Election Commission for candidates, political parties and governments to follow during an election. It sets guardrails for campaign events, speeches, election manifestos and other aspects of the polls.

Sibal urged the court to consider laying down guidelines, including for media and online platforms.

The petitioners have sought a declaration that public speeches made in an official or quasi-official capacity must conform to constitutional morality and the values of equality, fraternity and secularism as well as Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

Article 14 guarantees the right to equality and Article 21 guarantees the right to life and personal liberty.

The petitioners also asked the court to frame guidelines governing such speeches without imposing any restraint on the right to free speech.

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to entertain petitions seeking a first information report against Sarma for hate speech against Muslims.

A bench headed by Kant had told the petitioners to approach the Gauhati High Court and directed it to hear the matter on priority.

Petitions seeking action against the Bharatiya Janata Party leader were filed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Communist Party of India leader Annie Raja.

In the past month, Sarma has made a series of remarks targeting Bengali-origin Muslims in Assam, calling them “Miyas”. The Assam chief minister had said that it was his job to “make them suffer”.

In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

Once a pejorative in Assam, from the common use of the honorific “Miya” among South Asian Muslims, the term has now been reappropriated by the community as a self-descriptor to refer to Muslims who migrated to Assam from Bengal during the colonial era.

India’s massive youth population – the much-touted demographic dividend – is set to come of age into an information environment rife with misinformation. In a 2025 American Political Science Review study Sumitra Badrinathan, Simon Chauchard, Florian Sichart, and I conducted across rural Bihar, more than half of the thousands of teenage students in our control group believed that exorcism can cure snakebites. Over 60% believed cow urine can cure Covid-19. The figures make it clear these were not fringe beliefs. Instead, they reflect how widely health misinformation has spread.

While advances in technology have made information access quicker and easier than ever, the spread of false information through trusted family WhatsApp groups, social media platforms, and word-of-mouth networks has been linked to several undesirable societal outcomes. From unscientific health remedies to fabricated political conspiracies, misinformation about health, politics, and minorities shapes young people’s attitudes about vaccines, elections, and out-groups.

Such attitudes can even influence critical behaviors – such as whether to seek professional medical help – with important implications for individual and community health. Can education offer a solution? Our study suggests that classroom interventions can work, even in the most challenging settings.

In response to the threat posed by misinformation, several governments around the world, including Finland and New Jersey, now mandate media literacy in schools. While international organisations and forums have been advocating such educational interventions, adoption remains very limited.

According to a UNESCO report among 194 member states, fewer than 50% have formally integrated these initiatives into their education systems in any capacity, and adoption is much lower among Asian and African countries.

The report highlights several main barriers to implementation, including a lack of dedicated funding, inadequate teacher training, and the absence of a coordinated policy framework. Before governments invest into media literacy programs, there is a need for systematic empirical evidence on whether such interventions build citizens’ capacity to navigate complex information environments and counter misinformation.

My co-authors and I attempted to test the efficacy of such interventions in rural Bihar with large-scale experimental evidence of classroom-based media literacy education. Bihar presents a unique and challenging context for information and media literacy interventions. The state has one of the highest school dropout rates in India. There is a strong cultural attachment to non-scientific medical approaches, like folk remedies, which can conflict with evidence-based medical approaches when treating serious conditions, as we discovered in our baseline surveys.

There is also low diffusion of internet access, with only 19% of our sample reporting internet usage, making students particularly vulnerable to misinformation when they do encounter online content. False health information circulates widely through social networks, often presented with the same authority as scientifically validated information. Hence, insights from Bihar – a potentially hard case for the success of such interventions – may provide valuable lessons for policymakers and other stakeholders across the country.

A study in Bihar

Our study, the Bihar Information and Media Literacy Initiative, involved carrying out a randomised controlled trial encompassing over 13,500 students in grades 8 through 12 across 583 villages in Bihar. My co-authors and I designed and implemented four 90-minute “literacy” sessions over roughly 14 weeks in 100 government-run community libraries across 32 districts. Around each library, nearby villages were selected and randomly assigned to either the treatment group or the control group. From each village, classrooms were created with 20 to 24 students.

The treatment villages received a media and information literacy course, while the control villages received basic English-language instruction, allowing us to hold constant classroom participation and engagement while varying only the lecture content. This initiative was delivered as an official government course through our partnership with the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society (commonly known as Jeevika), which significantly boosted legitimacy and enrollment rates.

The curriculum and training of educators (who delivered the programme), which was co-designed and implemented with DataLeads, focused on developing critical evaluation skills for health information sources, teaching students to identify misleading or manipulative health content, providing practical tools for verifying information credibility, and building capabilities for responsible information sharing within communities. The programme included specific modules on assessing the reliability of different types of health advice, understanding the difference between anecdotal and scientific evidence, and recognising common tactics used to make false information appear credible.

Discerning information credibility

The Bihar Information and Media Literacy Initiative had significant positive effects across multiple outcomes. Students who received the media literacy course showed a 35% improvement in accuracy in discerning true from false health headlines, which were locally salient. This improvement was not simply about memorising specific facts, but rather about developing systematic approaches to evaluating information credibility.

Source discernment improved by 42%, indicating that students developed a sophisticated understanding of how to assess the reliability of different information sources. Perhaps most importantly for public health outcomes, students were 27% less likely to forward questionable health claims and more likely to verify information before sharing it with family members or friends.

This change in sharing intention has the potential to slow the spread of health misinformation in community networks. The intervention also achieved a 15% reduction in preference for non-scientific medicine for serious health conditions, primarily by reducing vaccine hesitancy and stated reliance on alternative forms of medicine for serious illness. This finding is significant becauseresearch indicates that beliefs related to group identity are highly resistant, and alternative medicines, which have existed for generations, are closely tied to these identities.

Our study also found evidence of lasting impact, with effects remaining significant in the four-month follow-up across most primary outcome measures. Moreover, the intervention also produced significant spillover effects to parents and family members who did not directly participate in the programme. Even the parents of participating students showed improved information-evaluation abilities, providing evidence of “trickle-up” education from children to adults.

These findings challenge conventional assumptions about information flow within families and suggest that well-designed youth programmes can have broader community impact. In addition, the skills appeared to transfer beyond health misinformation (the curriculum’s focus) to political rumor. Students who received the media literacy sessions were better at identifying true versus false political news. These findings suggest that inoculating against misinformation in one domain (in our case, health misinformation) can also build capacity against other misinformation (in this case, political misinformation).

Despite the encouraging findings, a limitation of our design is that it does not allow us to systematically attribute the results to the different elements of the intervention – curriculum, well-trained facilitators, or partnership with a trusted government agency, peer interaction among students; future research should aim on isolating these to get more specific insights for policy.

Policy counterpoint

Two lessons stand out for policymakers considering classroom-based media literacy. First, the intervention worked in a setting characterised by low literacy, limited digital access, and deeply rooted identity-based misinformation. That the initiative generated large and persistent effects under these constraints underscores the power of repeated, interactive, offline instruction delivered by trusted local institutions.

Second, the acquired skills are transferable. Students did not merely memorise health facts; they learned how to evaluate information more broadly, applying those skills even to political news that was never discussed in class. This kind of transfer is critical for policy relevance: governments need programmes that prepare students for a wide array of evolving misinformation threats.

These findings also offer a counterpoint to more restrictive approaches. Australia recently enacted legislation banning children under 16 from social media platforms, reflecting growing concern about online harms. While such measures stem from legitimate worries, outright bans are difficult to enforce and do little to equip young people with the skills they will eventually need to navigate digital spaces.

Education-based interventions offer an alternative: by building critical evaluation skills early, they foster resilience rather than dependence on restrictions. If children can learn to assess content critically before they encounter it unsupervised, the case for blanket bans weakens considerably. Investing in media literacy may ultimately prove more sustainable – and more respectful of individual agency – than attempting to wall off the digital world entirely.

In Bihar and elsewhere, misinformation has fueled health risks, polarisation, and even mob violence. Rumors about vaccines, religious communities, and public health measures have spread rapidly, often with devastating consequences. In the coming years, policymakers should actively seek more evidence to determine whether this study’s success in Bihar can be replicated in other Indian states, whether the positive effects last beyond four months, and how curricula can adapt to counter AI-generated misinformation.

Achieving this will require ongoing collaboration among educators, technologists, and researchers to monitor the evolving information landscape. A media literacy programme that is designed once and never revisited risks becoming outdated, leaving students unprepared for a rapidly changing world. India’s demographic dividend could become a misinformation liability – or, with the right media literacy efforts and investments in education, its greatest asset in building a more discerning citizenry.

Priyadarshi Amar is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University Carlos III (Madrid) and Instituto Juan Linz.

The article was first published in India in Transition, a publication of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.

Tarique Rahman, the chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, was sworn in as the prime minister of Bangladesh. Along with him, several Cabinet members also took the oath of office.

All elected MPs, including those from the Opposition Jamaat-e-Islami, were sworn-in in Parliament. However, Bangladesh Nationalist Party legislators declined to take a second oath as members of the Constitution Reform Commission.

The two oaths were undertaken to integrate the results of the parliamentary elections and a referendum for extensive constitutional amendments by including the July Charter into the Constitution. Read on.

A reminder: BNP coming to power in Bangladesh was once the worst-case scenario for Delhi, writes Shoaib Daniyal

The Karnataka High Court quashed criminal defamation proceedings against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a case filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Permitting the case to continue would amount to an abuse of law, said the bench.

The complaint in the matter was filed by BJP leader S Keshava Prasad against Gandhi, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar in May 2023.

Prasad objected to the Congress’ allegations that the BJP government, which was in power from 2019 to 2023, was charging a 40% commission or bribes from contractors for undertaking public works. Read on.

The Kerala High Court quashed an order issued by the state government on October 10 that launched the Nava Kerala Citizen Response Programme. The programme aimed to collect feedback from households in the state on welfare measures through committees and volunteers.

The court observed that the state government cannot use public funds and machinery for a large-scale household survey that resembles a political campaign ahead of the Assembly elections, which are expected to be held in April.

The verdict came on two public interest litigation petitions, which claimed that the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front government was misusing public funds ahead of the elections. Read on.

The interim government in Bangladesh provided compensation in savings certificates worth 2.5 million Bangladeshi taka, or about Rs 18.5 lakh, to Dipu Chandra Das’ family. Das, a garment worker, was a Hindu man who was lynched in the country’s Mymensingh district on December 18.

He had been accused of blasphemy and beaten to death by a mob, after which his body was allegedly tied to a tree and set on fire. Eighteen persons were taken into custody in connection with the killing.

Das’ killing and several other attacks on religious minorities had been reported in Bangladesh at the time, which led to demonstrations in India. The developments had worsened strained ties between New Delhi and Dhaka. Read on.

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The Kerala High Court on Tuesday quashed an order issued by the state government on October 10 launching the Nava Kerala Citizen Response Programme, The Hindu reported. The programme aimed to collect feedback from households on welfare measures through committees and volunteers.

A bench of Chief Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Syam Kumar VM said that the state government cannot use public funds and machinery for a large-scale household survey that resembles a political campaign ahead of the Assembly elections, Bar and Bench reported.

The Kerala Assembly elections are expected to be held in April.

The court said that the Rs 20 crore allocated for the survey from the public exchequer had been sanctioned without financial approval or budgetary clearance, the legal news outlet reported.

While the state government is not barred from undertaking welfare measures or conducting surveys related to schemes, any expenditure incurred “must have a financial sanction and pass muster with the financial rules”, the bench said.

The court added that it was not questioning the Cabinet’s wisdom in undertaking such a study. “But for executing and implementing such study, funds [outside] the financial rules are utilised and such irregularities if are brought on record, the court has a duty to declare such utilisation of funds as illegal,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying.

The bench also restrained the state government from proceeding with the survey.

The verdict came on two public interest litigation petitions filed by district panchayat member Mubas MH and Kerala Students Union president Aloshious Xavier, challenging the programme.

The petitions claimed that the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front government was misusing public funds to conduct the programme ahead of the Assembly elections, The Hindu reported.

They added that the proposed survey involved ward-level visits to homes, public spaces, Kudumbashree units and workplaces by volunteers to gather details and opinions about the state government’s welfare measures, Bar and Bench reported.

Kudumbashree units are community-based micro-enterprises and, more broadly, a three-tier network in Kerala, which was established in 1998 to eradicate poverty and empower women.

Such a door-to-door outreach exercise in the run-up to the Assembly elections amounted to a “state-sponsored political exercise” disguised as a development study, the petitioners alleged.

The petitions also stated that Rs 20 crore had been allocated from the public exchequer under a “special PR campaign” for implementing the programme, Bar and Bench reported.

They also alleged that the survey would result in the collection of extensive personal and household-level data without statutory backing or adequate safeguards, adding that this infringed upon citizens’ right to privacy.

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement stated on Tuesday that it has detained an Indian-origin man in connection with pending criminal charges, including the alleged sexual assault of a minor, in New Jersey.

In a social media post, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement identified the man as Vodela Yashaswi Kottapalli and described him as a “criminal illegal alien from India”.

The charges against Kottpalli are “sexual assault of a child under 13, shoplifting and public disorder”, the US agency said.

“We will keep him in custody pending removal proceedings,” it added.

The detention came amid a broader immigration crackdown under US President Donald Trump, during his second term that began in January 2025.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been implementing the Trump administration’s large-scale deportation programme, which was a major poll promise of his campaign ahead of the elections.

The agency was set up under the 2002 Homeland Security Act following the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York. The legislation created the Department of Homeland Security, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as one of its subsidiary agencies.

In his second term, Trump has expanded the agency’s mandate and increased its budget and operation scope. It enforces deferral immigration laws, investigates violations related to undocumented immigration and conducts removal proceedings.

More than 3,800 Indian nationals were deported from the United States in 2025, Minister of State for External Affairs Kirti Vardhan Singh informed the Rajya Sabha in a written response to a query, The Indian Express reported.

“Such deportations are subject to an unambiguous verification of their Indian nationality,” the newspaper quoted Singh as saying in the reply.

In 2025, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 1,993 Indian nationals, more than double the 820 arrested the previous year, according to data provided by the agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request processed by the Deportation Data Project and analysed by Scroll.

Read more: ICE arrests of Indian nationals doubled in 2025 amid Trump’s immigration crackdown

Delhi University on Tuesday banned protests, public meetings and processions on campus for one month, days after clashes during a demonstration linked to the 2026 University Grants Commission’s Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations, The Hindu reported.

In an order, university Proctor Manoj Kumar Singh said that “such unrestricted gatherings” on campus may obstruct traffic, threaten human life and disturb public peace.

The order noted that organisers had previously failed to control such protests, leading to escalation and a deterioration of law and order on campus, the newspaper reported. The ban will remain in force for one month unless withdrawn earlier, it added.

It also noted that shouting slogans, making speeches and carrying hazardous materials have also been barred.

Singh told The Hindu that the ban was imposed following the recent clashes on campus.

The regulations, notified on January 13 by the University Grants Commission, led to protests by some upper-caste students, who argued that the framework could result in discrimination against them. They contended that the rules did not include safeguards against “false complaints”.

On January 29, the Supreme Court stayed the operation of the regulations, observing that their provisions were “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”. It asked the Union government to redraft the regulations. Until then, their operation will remain in abeyance.

On Friday, the All India Students’ Association, the student wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, held a protest in solidarity with the regulations.

During Friday’s protest, the All India Students’ Association alleged that a YouTuber named Ruchi Tiwari used casteist slurs about its members, The Hindu reported.

Tiwari, however, claimed that she was manhandled and assaulted by the protesters. Police have registered two first information reports after complaints were filed by both sides.

What the rules mandate

The University Grants Commission’s new equity rules require institutes to set up special committees, helplines and monitoring teams to address complaints, particularly from members of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

The University Grants Commission had in 2012 first released equity rules for higher education institutes, which required them to set up Equal Opportunity Cells and Anti-Discrimination Officers. However, those rules did not provide for action against institutions that did not comply with them.

In contrast, the 2026 rules require the University Grants Commission to set up a monitoring committee to oversee their implementation.

Institutes that do not comply with the regulations can be barred from participating in the commission’s schemes, offering degree programmes and online courses, and can be removed from the list of institutes eligible to receive central grants.

Three writ petitions had been filed in the Supreme Court challenging Section 3(c) of the regulations, which defines caste-based discrimination as discrimination against members of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

One of the petitioners, advocate Vineet Jindal, had contended that the provision renders protection against caste discrimination non-inclusionary. He had argued that the provision, in its current “exclusionary form”, denies grievance redressal mechanisms and institutional protection to individuals who do not belong to the three categories.

Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Bahadur Singh Koli triggered a controversy in the Rajasthan Assembly on Monday by likening the budgets presented by the Hindutva party and the Congress to the birth of a boy and a girl, The Indian Express reported.

“Ours is a youth budget, theirs is an old-age budget,” said Koli, who represents the Weir Assembly constituency in Bharatpur, speaking during the debate on the state Budget. “Our honourable CM Bhajan Lal Sharma, our government gave birth to a boy in the very first budget, and then again in the second and third budgets.”

He added: “The one who gives birth to a boy in their youth is always useful.”

Referring to the previous Congress government, Koli said: “When Ashok Gehlot was the CM, he made announcements in his last budget, but a girl child was born, not a boy child, and hence you are sitting in the Opposition.”

Other BJP MLAs seated near Koli were seen laughing during his remarks, the newspaper reported.

Koli, a third-term MLA and former Lok Sabha MP, has two sons and two daughters.

The comments drew criticism from Leader of Opposition Tika Ram Jully, who demanded a public apology.

“The anti-girl child remarks made by the BJP MLA are clear evidence of the BJP’s anti-women and patriarchal mindset,” The Indian Express quoted Jully as saying. “His assertion that the Bhajan Lal government’s budget is ‘born a boy’ and the Gehlot government’s budget is ‘born a girl’ reflects a deeply conservative and narrow mindset.”

He also referred to former Chief Minister and BJP leader Vasundhara Raje, noting that the Budget Koli had praised was presented by a woman, and that the speaker of the Assembly had also previously been a woman.

“Such thinking is not only an insult to women but also undermines efforts to achieve gender equality in society,” The Indian Express quoted Jully as saying. “If public representatives themselves use such discriminatory language, how will gender discrimination be eradicated?”

The Allahabad High Court has issued contempt notices to Bareilly District Magistrate Avinash Singh and Senior Superintendent of Police Anurag Arya for allegedly preventing members of the Muslim community from offering namaz inside a vacant house in Mohammadganj village, The Times of India reported on Tuesday.

On Thursday, a bench of Justices Atul Shreedharan and Siddharth Nandan initiated proceedings against the officials under the 1971 Contempt of Courts Act. It also stayed coercive action against petitioner Tarik Khan.

The court has sought responses from the district magistrate and the police officer on March 11, when it will next hear the matter.

The dispute relates to an incident on January 16, when a group of Muslims were stopped while offering prayers inside a vacant house owned by a woman, Reshma Khan. Several Muslim men were detained and four persons had been arrested for allegedly disturbing public order by gathering there, and were later released.

Reshma Khan said that she had permitted the gathering and that the prayers had been held within the premises.

The petitioners had approached the High Court, citing its January 27 ruling in a separate matter that no permission is needed for holding a religious prayer meeting on private property in Uttar Pradesh as long as the activity was within its premises.

The ruling had come on a plea by Christian organisations who had sought permission to conduct prayer meetings in private premises.

The court had said that if a gathering has to “spill over the public road or public property”, the police must be informed and, if needed, permissions need to be secured.

Tarik Khan, the petitioner in the case pertaining to the gathering in Mohammadganj, said that the January 27 order had clarified that prayers could be offered within a private property, The Times of India reported.

“We too are a minority, so the same rule should apply to us,” he said. “So far, we have been protected by the court’s stay, and that is why we resumed our prayers from the house.”

Tensions in Mohammadganj

Meanwhile, tensions have risen in Mohammadganj, where some Hindu residents objected to Friday prayers having resumed in the house, The Times of India reported.

Five families painted “house for sale” on the walls of their homes. They claimed that the house would eventually be converted into permanent places of worship, the newspaper reported.

They asked Chief Minister Adityanath to intervene in the matter.

The senior superintendent of police was quoted as saying that the situation was under control and that no coercive action had been taken.

“We have never interfered with religious practices as long as they do not violate established norms,” The Times of India quoted him as saying.

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition challenging the Telangana High Court order that quashed a 2016 case against Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy filed under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, Live Law reported.

The case pertains to allegations that Reddy allegedly instigated persons who broke into the SC Mutually Aided Cooperative Housing Society in Razole constituency, vandalised the premises with a bulldozer and shouted casteist remarks at the complainant, who had tried to stop them, the legal news outlet reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi observed that the High Court had, in July, correctly quashed the matter, as no prima facie case had been found against Reddy.

It verbally observed that the matter appeared to be a case of misusing courts for political battles, Live Law reported.

When the counsel representing the petitioner argued that the High Court had not considered Section 6 of the SC/ST Act that penalises abetment of offences, the chief justice said that the matter being raised was “only for political mileage”, Live Law reported.

While the counsel said that the case was from 2016 when Reddy was not the chief minister, the bench responded that the Congress leader was an active politician at the time.

Reddy was a member of the Telugu Desam Party at the time.

Bagchi observed that there was no evidence linking Reddy to the incident except for hearsay.

The interim government in Bangladesh on Monday provided compensation in savings certificates worth 2.5 million Bangladeshi taka, or about Rs 18.5 lakh, to the family of Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu man who was lynched in the country’s Mymensingh district in December, The Indian Express reported.

Das, a garment worker, had been accused of blasphemy and beaten to death by a mob on December 18, after which his body was allegedly tied to a tree and set on fire. Eighteen persons were taken into custody in connection with the killing.

Das was killed amid widespread unrest in Bangladesh following the death of student leader Sharif Osman Bin Hadi, who succumbed to gunshot injuries at a hospital in Singapore earlier that day.

Hadi was a prominent leader in the 2024 student protest that led to the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League government.

Das’ killing and several other attacks on religious minorities had been reported in Bangladesh at the time, which led to demonstrations in India.

The developments had worsened strained ties between New Delhi and Dhaka.

Following Das’ death, the Indian government on December 26 condemned his lynching, saying that the “unremitting hostility” against minorities in the country was concerning. Two days later, Dhaka rejected the remarks and described them as “inaccurate, exaggerated or motivated”.

On Monday, the compensation was presented to Das’ family through Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus’ office. This came a day before the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was set to form the next government in the country.

Tarique Rahman, the chairperson of the party, will be sworn-in as the prime minister on Tuesday.

With this, the interim government’s term came to an end.

Yunus, a Nobel laureate economist, stepped down as the chief adviser to the interim government on Monday after the disbursal of the bonds, The Indian Express reported.

He had taken over as the head of Bangladesh’s interim government after Hasina was ousted and fled to India in August 2024 following several weeks of widespread student-led protests against her Awami League government. She had been in power for 16 years.

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday quashed criminal defamation proceedings against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a case filed by the Bharatiya Janata Party regarding allegations that the Hindutva party’s government in the state had taken bribes from contractors, Bar and Bench reported.

Allowing Gandhi’s petition, Justice Sunil Dutt Yadav held that permitting the case to continue would amount to an abuse of law.

The complaint in the matter was filed by BJP leader S Keshava Prasad against Gandhi, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar in May 2023. Prasad objected to campaign advertisements and slogans used by the Congress during the Assembly elections that year.

Prasad objected to the Congress’ allegations that the BJP government, which was in power from 2019 to 2023, was charging a 40% commission or bribes from contractors for undertaking public works.

The BJP had alleged that the Congress was spreading false claims against its members, including the then Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.

The Congress was elected to power in the state in 2023, replacing the BJP government.

A magistrate court granted bail in the case to Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar on June 1, 2024 and to Gandhi on June 7, 2024.

Noting that the Union government has accused British-Indian writer and activist Amrit Wilson of engaging in anti-India activities, the Delhi High Court on Monday said that it cannot allow the country to be maligned on international platforms, Bar and Bench reported.

Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav made the remarks after examining a sealed cover report furnished by the Union government detailing the reasons for cancelling Wilson’s Overseas Citizen of India card.

Overseas Citizen of India is an immigration status that allows foreigners of Indian origin to live and work in India indefinitely. Its cancellation effectively barred Wilson from entering the country.

The judge directed the Union government to file its submissions on the petition by Wilson against the cancellation of her Overseas Citizen of India card, Live Law reported.

Kaurav said: “We should not be such a tolerant state that we allow our own country to be criticised… maligned at international platform.”

He added that there were Intelligence Bureau reports filed against Wilson and that the allegations against her were serious.

In 2023, the Union government had cancelled Wilson’s Overseas Citizen of India card after accusing her of being involved in several “anti-India activities” and “detrimental propaganda”. Subsequently, the 82-year-old moved the court against the decision.

She argued that the cancellation was illegal, arbitrary and made without proper application of mind.

The Union government was issued a notice on the petition in May 2023.

During the hearing on Monday, Advocate Trideep Pais, representing Wilson, said that the show-cause notice issued to her for the cancellation of her Overseas Citizenship of India card did not contain any details.

The Union government had initially referred to a tweet of hers on the social media platform X and one article on the farmers’ protest, Pais said. Another article on Kashmir was also cited, he added.

However, the show-cause notice was not issued based on this, the advocate said.

He also said that none of Wilson’s works was anti-India.

The matter has been listed for further hearing on August 27.

Wilson’s work has focused on issues of race and gender in Britain and South Asian politics.

Her publications include Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain (1978) and Dreams, Questions, Struggles: South Asian Women in Britain (2006). Her work has also been published in several outlets, including Ceasefire Magazine, Media Diversified, openDemocracy and The Guardian.

Similar cases in recent years

Several scholars and activists have similarly been denied entry into India in recent years.

In October, Francesca Orsini, a Hindi scholar and professor at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, was allegedly stopped from entering India despite having a valid five-year visa.

Orsini had arrived in Delhi from Hong Kong after attending an academic conference in China. However, the immigration authorities allegedly denied her entry into the country.

The scholar had said that no reason was provided for the denial.

In February 2025, Indian-origin anti-caste activist Kshama Sawant alleged that the Indian government had denied her an emergency visa thrice to visit her ailing mother in Bengaluru, claiming that her name was on a “reject list”.

The United States-based activist also claimed that officials had refused to give her an explanation for the rejection.

In January 2025, Swedish Indian-origin professor Ashok Swain moved the Delhi High Court seeking an early hearing of his petition challenging the cancellation of his Overseas Citizen of India status.

Swain is a professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Sweden’s Uppsala University.

The Union government had cancelled Swain’s Overseas Citizen of India registration in July 2023 on the grounds that he had been found indulging in “illegal activities inimical” to the interests of the sovereignty, integrity and security of India.

The Delhi High Court in March 2025 set aside the Union government’s order cancelling Swain’s Overseas Citizen of India registration. However, it allowed the Union government to issue a fresh show-cause notice to the professor.

In February 2024, Nitasha Kaul, a British writer of Indian origin and professor of politics at the University of Westminster in London, alleged that she was denied entry into the country and deported from Bengaluru airport on the orders of the Union government “for speaking on democratic and constitutional values”.

In March 2022, anthropologist Filippo Osella was deported to the United Kingdom from the Thiruvananthapuram airport without being given any official reason. Osella, recognised for his work on societies in South Asia, had flown in to attend a research conference in the state capital.

In August 2022, US-based journalist Angad Singh was allegedly deported from Delhi airport when he was on his way from New York to visit his family in Punjab. In January 2023, the Union government told the Delhi High Court that Singh was blacklisted from visiting India because his documentary India Burning presented a “very negative view of India’s secular credentials”.

Singh is a US citizen and an Overseas Citizen of India cardholder.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to stay an amendment to the Right to Information Act made through the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, Bar and Bench reported.

The amendment bars the disclosure of personal information about public officials even on the grounds of larger public interest.

Hearing petitions seeking a stay on the amendment, a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi observed that the matter was sensitive, and was about balancing competing interests because “it touches upon fundamental rights on both sides”.

“We have to iron out the creases and lay down what is personal information,” Kant was quoted as saying.

The court said that it cannot block a legislation by Parliament unless it hears the case. It agreed to “decide at the earliest” and said it would place the matter before a larger bench in March.

The court issued a notice to the Union government, Live Law reported.

The bench was hearing pleas filed by news organisation The Reporters Collective and the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, among others.

The Reporters Collective has challenged the constitutional validity of the 2023 personal data protection law and its 2025 rules.

The plea particularly challenges sections pertaining to consent, processing obligations, government access to data, amendments to the RTI Act and the setting up of the Data Protection Board, Bar and Bench reported.

The petitioners have contended that the rules notified in November alter the balance between privacy, transparency and free speech.

Section 44(3) of the digital personal data protection law amended Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act. This blocked the disclosure of “personal” information in larger public interest, which was allowed earlier.

The petitioners have contended that the change allows the authorities to withhold information on the grounds that it is personal even if it pertains to public activities or accountability.

The digital personal data protection law also does not contain exemptions for processing personal data for public interest or journalistic purposes such as investigative reporting, the plea has argued.

News associations have expressed concern about the digital personal data protection rules saying that the “ambiguous obligations” they impose could open the door for indirect censorship.

Critics have described the amendment to the RTI Act as a serious threat to the principles of transparency and accountability that the law was designed to uphold.

Also Read: Why the draft personal data protection rules are contentious

The Union Budget 2026-’27 presented on February 1 has explicitly recognised persons with disabilities as a distinct constituency, and enhanced allocations for two key schemes.

For the first time, disability is acknowledged as a category beyond being included as an “other marginalised group” in two new schemes under the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities and in an emphasis on mental health infrastructure.

But there is a familiar paradox: despite generous allocations, India’s disability budgeting is constrained by chronic underutilisation, weak institutional capacity and fragmented accountability.

More money

For 2026-’27, the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities has been allocated Rs 1,670 crore, an increase of nearly 30% over the revised estimates of 2025-’26, amounting to approximately Rs 380 crore more. Revised estimates are closer to the expenditure, unlike budget estimates which are proposed expenditures.

This increase has largely been driven by two new flagship schemes: the Rs 200-crore Divyangjan Kaushal Yojana, aimed at industry-aligned skill development, and the Rs 100-crore Divyang Sahara Yojana for assistive devices. Together, these schemes account for 79% of the increase, signalling the government’s emphasis on employability and technological support.

However, allocations for existing schemes, administrative expenses and institutions for the disabled have increased by only about Rs 80 crore. The department has consistently been unable to fully utilise funds in previous years, which throws into sharp relief the skewed allocations for projects over the machinery to implement them.

In 2024-’25, the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities spent 88% of the budget estimates, and returned nearly Rs 141 crore to the consolidated fund due to implementation bottlenecks.

Reports of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment have repeatedly flagged this trend.

In the report presented to Parliament in March 2025, the panel pointed out persistent underutilisation across key schemes, like the scheme to subsidise assistive devices such as wheelchairs, hearing aids, and prosthetics.

Similarly, the committee noted a marked decrease in 2024-’25 in the expenditure on the District Disability Rehabilitation Scheme: the allocation was allocated Rs 165 crore, which was revised to 139 crore but only 87.95 crore was actually spent. The scheme supports disability rehabilitation services, and scholarships for children with disabilities.

The problem, therefore, is a failure in translating allocations into outcomes.

Undermining schemes

The Scheme for Implementation of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act exemplifies this problem. It is an umbrella framework that supports interventions such as the disability identity card, barrier-free infrastructure, digital accessibility and sensitisation initiatives.

In 2024-25, the scheme was allocated Rs 135.33 crore but only Rs 43.90 crore was actually spent, as of March 2025. In response to the committee’s queries on the low expenditure, the department said that the scheme is demand-driven and grants are released based on proposals from state governments with documentary evidence, like utilisation certificates for money from previous years.

Despite a revised estimate allocation of Rs 200 crore in 2025-’26, marking a rare mid-year increase reflecting rising demand, the allocation for 2026-’27 has been reduced to Rs 125 crore – a decrease of nearly 38%.

The Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities has previously acknowledged that funds under the scheme were unused because several states were unable to adopt the treasury single account system required to disburse funds.

This has meant penalising the scheme by reducing allocations instead of resolving administrative bottlenecks. It contradicts the government’s stated policy priorities and risks weakening the foundational architecture on which disability inclusion depends.

Undermining the Scheme for Implementation of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act has cascading effects as it supports processes that enable access to education, employment and social protection.

Institutional support

Concerns are even sharper when examining allocations for statutory institutions, like the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities.

It is the principal enforcement and grievance redressal authority under the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, and has been allocated just Rs 20 lakh, unchanged from the previous year. This amount must cover staffing, infrastructure, hearings, monitoring and follow-up actions.

The inadequacy is stark. In 2025 alone, the commissioner’s office imposed penalties on nearly 100 establishments for violating digital accessibility norms. Effective enforcement requires resources for investigations, hearings and compliance monitoring. The unchanged allocation raises serious concerns about the seriousness of enforcing disability rights.

Similarly, the government has announced a new National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, or NIMHANS, in north India, but failed to provide allocations in the budget. Proposing a new institute acknowledges long-standing access barriers, particularly the high out-of-pocket costs faced by persons with psychosocial disabilities who must travel to Bengaluru for specialised assessments.

But there is no corresponding line-item allocation under the Ministry of Health. Unlike new All India Institutes of Medical Science, which are backed by explicit budgetary provisions, the absence of earmarked funds for the mental health institution casts doubt on timelines and the intention to implement announcements.

Political economy of disability

This cycle of underallocation and underutilisation shows that actually changing the lives of people with disabilities is a low political priority that has little to do with inadequate funding. Rights guaranteed under the law are reduced to discretionary welfare that depends on bureaucratic efficiency across multiple levels of the government.

As seen with the Scheme for Implementation of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, centre-state dynamics can further dilute accountability. The central government controls funding while states manage implementation of schemes and policies. Delays and failures are routinely attributed to this division of responsibility, with persons with disabilities caught in between.

The Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment, in its December report, had observed that disability policy in India suffers less from a lack of knowledge about required interventions and more from insufficient political will to execute them.

The disability allocations in the Budget 2026-27 hold real potential. The increase in funding and emphasis on skills, assistive technology and mental health signal intent that could prove transformative. However, real outcomes will depend on making the monetary allocations actually count.

Shashank Pandey is a lawyer and the founder of politics and disability forum.

A sessions court in Karnataka’s Koppal district on Monday sentenced three men to death for gang-raping two women and killing a man in March 2025, The Times of India reported.

The crime, which occurred about 25 km from the world heritage site of Hampi, had sparked widespread outrage at the time.

On March 6, 2025, two women, a 27-year-old from Israel and a 29-year-old homestay owner from Koppal, were assaulted and raped by the three men. The women were part of a group of five persons, which included three other male travellers from the United States, Odisha and Maharashtra.

The body of the male tourist from Odisha had been found two days after the incident.

On Monday, Judge Sadananda Nagappa Nayaka ruled that the crime fell under the “rarest of rare” category and warranted maximum punishment, NDTV reported.

The three men are 22-year-old Mallesh alias Handimalla, 21-year-old Sai alias Chaitanya Sai and 30-year-old Sharanappa alias Sharanabasavaraj.

The court had convicted them on February 6.

The case

In her complaint, the homestay owner said that the offence took place at about 10.30 pm, when she and her four guests were stargazing after dinner by the Tungabhadra Left Bank Canal.

She alleged that three men arrived on a motorcycle and asked where they could get petrol. One of them demanded Rs 100 from the tourists, and when they refused, he began arguing and attacking them. The altercation led to the three male tourists being assaulted and pushed into the canal, after which the women were sexually assaulted.

The three perpetrators then fled the crime scene on their bike with two mobile phones and Rs 9,500 in cash from the travellers, the complaint had alleged.

Two days after the alleged incident, search teams recovered the body of 26-year-old Bibash, who hailed from Odisha. The other two men, 23-year-old Daniel and 42-year-old Pankaj, had managed to swim ashore.

The police had registered a case on charges of gangrape, robbery, assault and attempt to murder against the three persons.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday alleged widespread irregularities in the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the state.

The former chief minister demanded greater transparency in the process and action against persons responsible for the alleged irregularities.

Yadav said at a press conference that he will ask the Election Commission to clarify under which rules should first information reports be registered in the matter.

He asked why the Election Commission had not taken action so far and added that the Samajwadi Party will raise the matter in the Assembly, where the Budget Session is underway.

The Samajwadi Party chief demanded that the process of removing voters from the electoral rolls be initiated only by booth-level officers and not by others, PTI reported. Details such as the booth number, Assembly constituency and the name of the person who submitted Form 7s should be made public, he added.

Form 7 of the Election Commission is the official application used to object to the inclusion of a name or to request the deletion of a name from an existing electoral roll.

Names of SP supporters being removed, alleges Yadav

Yadav alleged that the names of Samajwadi Party supporters were being deleted unlawfully and that the poll panel had given the party “very little” information, PTI reported.

He claimed that in Sakaldiha town, the names of 16 voters had been deleted after allegedly forged signatures were submitted in the name of a Samajwadi Party MLA. He alleged that an analysis of the voters would show that they belonged to the “PDA”, or pichhda (backward), Dalit and alpsankhyak (minority) communities.

Yadav alleged that a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party had claimed that three lakh voters had been deleted in Kannauj and that more were to be removed in other districts. Yadav is the MP from Kannauj.

Yadav’s remark was an apparent reference to a claim made by former BJP MP Subrata Pathak in December.

The former chief minister stated that while the Samajwadi Party had filed 47 Form 7s in the state, the BJP had submitted 1,729 and “unknown persons” had 1.2 lakh applications. These unknown persons were linked to the Hindutva party, he claimed.

Uttar Pradesh is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the Election Commission is conducting the special intensive revision of the voter rolls. The exercise had begun on October 27.

The draft roll in the state was published on January 6. It showed that the names of 2.8 crore voters had been removed – the largest number of deletions among the 12 states and Union Territories.

The deletions included 2.1 crore persons who had shifted from their registered residences, 46.2 lakh voters who had died and 25.4 lakh duplicate entries.

The names of 12.5 crore voters out of the total 15.4 crore electors had been retained in the draft roll.

The deletions from the draft roll are provisional and citizens can object to their names being removed from the list. The poll panel had on February 6 extended the deadline to March 6 for voters to file their claims and objections.

The deadline for hearings and verification was extended to March 27 from February 27. The final electoral roll in the state will be published on April 10.

The Supreme Court on Monday questioned the Union government about the accuracy of transcripts of videos relied upon to detain Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk under the National Security Act, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and PB Varale was hearing a petition filed by Wangchuk’s wife, Gitanjali Angmo, challenging the activist’s detention.

Wangchuk was detained on September 26 and taken to a jail in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur after protests in Leh demanding statehood for Ladakh and its inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. During the protests, demonstrators clashed with and threw stones at security personnel, injuring several of them. Four persons were killed in police firing.

The Union government has alleged that Wangchuk was the “chief provocateur” of the September 24 violence and that the protests in Leh came under control after the activist was taken into custody.

On Monday, the bench said it wanted the transcripts of Wangchuk’s statements after advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Angmo, submitted that several words attributed to the activist were never spoken by him.

“The tabular list you [the Union government] have filed, some of these things don’t even find a place in the detention order,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying. “There should be at least the correct transcript of what he [Wangchuk] says.”

The bench added: “There should not be a variance. If the speech is of three minutes and your transcription goes on for seven-eight minutes, there is certainly malice in that.”

Additional Solicitor General KM Nataraj told the court that the transcription had been prepared by “a department” and that the government were not “experts” in the process, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench responded that in the age of artificial intelligence, the precision should be at least 98%.

It also directed the Jodhpur jail superintendent to produce before it, in a sealed cover, a pen drive that Union authorities had handed over to Wangchuk on September 29, Live Law reported.

This came after Sibal told the court that although the grounds of detention were supplied to Wangchuk that day, the four videos of his speeches referred to in the detention order were not present on the pen drive. He argued that the detention order was vitiated because the relevant material had not been properly supplied to the activist, Live Law reported.

At an earlier hearing, Nataraj had submitted that Wangchuk was shown all the videos and contents of the detention order and that the process was videographed, alleging that the activist was lying to the court. The bench, however, had at the time pointed out that Wangchuk had not endorsed that he was given an opportunity to watch the videos containing his alleged inflammatory speeches, the legal news outlet reported.

On January 13, Sibal told the court that Wangchuk cannot be seen in the videos relied upon by the authorities as grounds for his detention under the National Security Act.

A controversy broke out in Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district after a group of Bharatiya Janata Party workers on Sunday allegedly sprinkled cow urine inside a temple to “purify” it following a visit by Abdul Sattar, an MLA from the Shiv Sena group led by Eknath Shinde, PTI reported.

Sattar, a former state minister and four-term MLA from the Sillod Assembly constituency, had offered prayers at the Nageshwar Mahadev Temple in Rahimabad village on the occasion of Mahashivratri on Sunday.

Viral Video: Gomutra Sprinkled At Nageshwar Mahadev Temple After Abdul Sattar's Mahashivratri Visit Sparks Outrage In Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar | WATCH pic.twitter.com/ZFmRHTwLjc

— Maharashtra News (@MahaNews25) February 16, 2026

However, BJP leaders in the area and members of Hindutva groups objected to Sattar’s presence at the temple, alleging that he consumes non-vegetarian food and had thereby harmed the sanctity of the shrine, The Times of India reported.

Manoj Morellu, BJP’s Sillod unit chief said party workers sprayed cow urine to “restore sanctity” to the temple, The Indian Express reported.

He alleged that Sattar eats cow meat and had harmed the sanctity of the temple with his visit.

Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Monday described the incident as “unfortunate”, The Indian Express reported.

“Abdul Sattar is an elected MLA,” Shinde said. “He is a patriot and a lover of this country. Such action on the part of people is not good.”

An adjudicating authority under the Foreign Exchange Management Act has imposed a total penalty of Rs 184 crore on NewsClick founder and editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha, the Enforcement Directorate said on Monday.

The Special Director of Enforcement passed the order on Monday following adjudication proceedings based on a complaint filed under Section 16 of the Foreign Exchange Management Act.

The proceedings related to alleged violations of foreign exchange law involving foreign direct investment and foreign inward remittances.

The authority imposed a penalty of Rs 120 crore on PPK Newsclick Studio Private Limited, which owns the news outlet and Rs 64 crore on Purkayastha.

The Enforcement Director said Purkayastha, as director of the company, was found to be in charge of and responsible for its business operations and was therefore held liable under the Act.

The agency alleged that the company received foreign direct investment of approximately Rs 9.5 crore during the financial year 2018-’19 after incorrectly describing its business in official filings, which it said allowed it to bypass certain regulatory requirements.

It also stated that foreign remittances amounting to Rs 82.6 crore, received between 2018-’19 and 2023-’24 and shown as payments for export of services, did not comply with foreign exchange rules, including mandatory reporting requirements such as submission of Software Export Declaration forms.

The probe agency said that the adjudicating authority, after examining records, evidence and submissions from the parties, concluded “that the contraventions were substantial, deliberate and systemic in nature”.

The SDE (Adjudicating Authority), Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA), has passed an Order-in-Original dated 16.02.2026 under FEMA,1999 imposing Rs.184 Crore Penalty, in an adjudication proceeding in the case of M/s PPK Newsclick Studio Pvt. Ltd relating to violations of… pic.twitter.com/d4FIPGMDXP

— ED (@dir_ed) February 16, 2026

Purkayastha told ThePrint on Monday that he had not yet received the order and had learnt of its existence through press releases and news reports.

“At this stage, therefore, I can only say that we believe there is no basis for such an order and will fight it legally,” he said.

The case pertains to a first information report registered by the Delhi Police in August 2020 against NewsClick for allegedly violating Foreign Direct Investment norms. The Enforcement Directorate then initiated an investigation into the matter after taking cognisance of the Delhi Police’s FIR.

In February 2021, the central agency conducted raids at the Newsclick office and Purkayastha’s home based on the allegations levelled by the Delhi Police. However, no arrests were made during the raids at that time.

In October 2023, the Delhi Police had raided the NewsClick office, along with the residences of nearly 80 journalists and other individuals associated with the portal. Purkayastha was arrested on the same day as the raids.

These raids were linked to another case filed against the news outlet under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act by the Delhi Police in March 2024, which alleged that it had received funds through Chinese entities “with the intention of undermining India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

The case was registered after The New York Times alleged in an August 2023 report that NewsClick had received money from American businessman Neville Roy Singham, who worked closely with the “Chinese government media machine” to spread its propaganda.

In May 2024, the Supreme Court had declared Purkayastha’s arrest in the case invalid and ordered his release.

In February 2016, Jawaharlal Nehru University became the epicentre of one of India’s most polarising debates on nationalism, dissent, and free speech after a campus event triggered a sedition case against Kanhaiya Kumar, the head of the students’ union, and nine other students.

A decade later, the matter is in a legal stalemate.

The Delhi Police has filed a chargesheet against the accused but the trial cannot begin until the Supreme Court decides whether the offence of sedition remains on the statute book.

Introduced by British colonialists, sedition criminalises attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established by law. The provision has long been criticised for its vague and expansive wording, which critics argue enables its misuse against dissent and political speech.

In the JNU sedition case, for instance, the Delhi Police’s chargesheet states that the accused shouted slogans that supported the secession of Kashmir, criticised the Indian state, and expressed solidarity with Afzal Guru, who had been convicted in the 2001 Parliament attack case.

But in submissions to a trial court in Delhi, lawyers representing the accused have disputed the authenticity of the video clips and the witness statements the police have relied on. They have also argued that even if some slogans were shouted, they do not amount to sedition.

Here, the lawyers relied on past judgements such as in the Kedar Nath Singh case in 1962, in which the Supreme Court held that sedition applies only when there is incitement to violence or public disorder, and the Balwant Singh case in 1995, where shouting pro-Khalistan slogans was held not to be seditious because it did not lead to any violence or disturbance.

While these arguments remain in abeyance until the Supreme Court decides the future of the sedition law, the prolonged uncertainty has taken a toll on the accused.

Anirban Bhattacharya, one of the accused who is currently working with a research and advocacy organisation, said he had to renew his passports every two years. Anyone facing a criminal case is issued a passport valid only for two years, instead of the standard 10 years.

“Every time I had to travel – for instance, to attend a workshop – it became a major hassle. I had to arrange a surety, find someone willing to pledge around Rs 5 lakh, and then return the passport after coming back.”

Kumar’s lawyer Chinmay Kanojia told Scroll that there has been “no real movement in the case and that it is unlikely to progress in the near future”.

Since 2022, when the Supreme Court stayed the sedition provision, the trial court has listed the matter at least 14 times, the most recent being on January 13, 2026. The matter was adjourned and posted for the next hearing April 16.

Campus protest to criminal prosecution

On February 9, 2016, an event was organised at Sabarmati Dhaba, in the JNU campus. Initially proposed as a poetry reading titled “The Country Without A Post Office”, the programme had been granted permission by the university authorities.

After posters in circulation indicated that the event was being organised to mark the anniversary of Afzal Guru’s execution, the university withdrew permission. But the event went ahead despite the cancellation, says the chargesheet. Soon after, television news channels aired videos that they claimed showed students shouting “anti-India” slogans.

On February 11, the Delhi Police registered a first information report under Section 124A for sedition of the Indian Penal Code against unknown persons.

The FIR was based on complaints lodged by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Maheish Girri, JNU Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad leader Saurabh Sharma, and videos and television news footage claiming to show that anti-India slogans were shouted during the event on campus.

The next day, on February 12, the Delhi Police arrested Kanhaiya Kumar, who was then the president of the JNU Students’ Union. The police later named doctoral students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya as accused in the FIR. Both of them surrendered to the police and were arrested on February 23.

During the bail hearing before the Delhi High Court on February 29, the police told the court that it did not have video evidence showing that Kumar had shouted “anti-India” slogans.

On March 2, the Delhi High Court granted Kumar interim bail for six months, while criticising him as well as others who participated in the campus event for misusing free speech. The judge told Kumar that he had the freedom to raise “anti-national slogans” only because India’s borders are “guarded by our armed and paramilitary forces”.

Days later, on March 18, Khalid and Bhattacharya, who were in judicial custody, were granted six-month interim bail by a Delhi trial court. They were released from Tihar jail after furnishing personal bonds and sureties, with restrictions on travel and a requirement to cooperate with the investigation.

Later that year, on August 26, the Delhi trial court granted Kumar, Khalid, and Bhattacharya regular bail. The police did not oppose the plea, stating that the accused had complied with bail conditions and cooperated with the investigation.

Meanwhile, a high-level inquiry committee set up by JNU had submitted its report to the university administration on March 16, 2016. The committee concluded that a group of masked outsiders had raised provocative slogans at the event, including “Bharat ko ragda do” and “Pakistan zindabad.”

Some witnesses claimed that slogans such as “Bharat ki barbadi tak jung rahegi” were also shouted, but the committee noted that there was no video evidence to substantiate this allegation.

No trial in 10 years

For three years after the first arrests, the case remained under police investigation. The accused appeared in court periodically to mark their presence, attend routine hearings where the court reviewed the status of the investigation and comply with bail conditions.

On January 14, 2019, the Delhi Police filed a chargesheet in court against 10 accused, including Kumar, Khalid and Bhattacharya. The names of the six other students emerged during the course of the police investigation.

Apart from sedition, the police invoked other penal provisions of the Indian Penal Code such as 120B for criminal conspiracy, 34 for common intention, 147 for rioting and 149 for unlawful assembly.

Then there was further delay.

For a case of sedition, the police must seek permission from the government, in this case the Home Department of the Delhi government then ruled by the Aam Aadmi Party. Without government sanction, courts cannot proceed with the trial. In July 2019, an Indian Express report, quoting unnamed sources, said that the Delhi government’s legal officer had opposed granting sanction.

Nearly a year later, the Delhi government’s Home Department granted sanction to the police on February 27, 2020.

In February 2021, a Delhi court took cognisance of the police’s final report, which included the chargesheet, technical documents and the government sanction for prosecution. The judge’s order summoned the accused for trial on March 15.

Beginning the process of framing charges, the court in March 2021 directed the Delhi Police to supply copies of the chargesheet to the accused.

But a development in the Supreme Court would soon put off the trial.

Read Scroll’s special series: A decade after the JNU sedition case, we trace the trajectories taken by four student-activists – and what that reveals about political life in India.

Sedition law

In February 2021, two journalists filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of Section 124A for sedition.

Kishorechandra Wangkhemcha and Kanhaiya Lal Shukla contended that the formulation of Section 124A allows for arbitrary application and that it is routinely invoked to silence criticism of those in power. Nine other petitions were subsequently tagged to it.

Meanwhile, the JNU sedition case was proceeding slowly with hearings repeatedly adjourned for reasons such as delay in supplying documents to the accused and securing the presence of those witnesses. The judiciary was also struggling with an administrative slowdown following the Covid-19 pandemic.

In May 2022, the Supreme Court directed that all trials, appeals, and proceedings under Section 124A be kept in abeyance. In its order, it said “no coercive action” should be taken in pending sedition cases. A year later, the Supreme Court referred the constitutional challenge to a larger bench in.

In August 2025, the Supreme Court expanded the scope of scrutiny further by agreeing to also examine Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita alongside the challenge to sedition. Section 152 mirrors the language of sedition provision in the Indian Penal Code. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita replaced the Indian Penal Code in July 2024.

Deep freeze

The Supreme Court’s 2022 order had an immediate impact on the JNU sedition case.

In July 2022, while hearing the matter, a Delhi trial court recorded submissions from defence counsel citing the Supreme Court ruling putting all proceedings under Section 124A in abeyance.

Accepting the submission, the court stayed the trial, observing that “although other penal provisions were involved, allowing the proceedings to continue could prejudice the accused while the constitutional validity of sedition remained under consideration”.

Advocate Sahil Ghai, who represents Khalid and Bhattacharya said, “each successive judge hearing the case – the matter is now before its third judge – has followed the same course and after noting the Supreme Court’s order staying sedition proceedings, the court has simply adjourned the case.”

Lives in limbo

The lives of the 10 students named in the FIR have taken markedly different trajectories. Kanhaiya’s lawyer Chinmay Kanojia said the bail conditions imposed in 2016 continue to remain in force. “Similar conditions were imposed on the other accused as well, but life has moved on for them, some have even gone abroad to pursue postgraduate studies.”

Kanhaiya Kumar joined the Congress in 2021, contesting elections and doing organisational work. Umar Khalid has been in jail since 2020 in connection with the alleged larger conspiracy behind the 2019 Delhi riots. Anirban Bhattacharya is now working as a director of campaigns and team lead, National Finance Team at Centre for Financial Accountability.

Yet, the sedition case continues to hover over them.

Referring to the routine appearances in court every three to four months, Bhattacharya said, “All of this looks routine now, but the case never actually moves.”

Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha on Monday ordered the reopening of 14 tourist spots in the Union Territory that were closed after the Pahalgam terror attack in April.

The administration had shut down around 50 tourist destinations in Jammu and Kashmir following the attack.

The terror attack at Baisaran near Pahalgam town in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22 left 26 persons dead and 16 injured. The terrorists targeted tourists after asking their names to ascertain their religion, the police said. All but three of those killed were Hindu.

In a social media post on Monday, Sinha said that he had ordered the reopening of the tourist spots “after a thorough security review and discussions”.

The number of tourist spots reopened so far now stands at 26. On September 26, Sinha had ordered the reopening of 12 tourist destinations, PTI reported.

“Eleven tourist spots in the Kashmir Division, Yousmarg, Doodhpathri, Dandipora Park in Kokernag, Peer Ki Gali, Dubjan and Padpawan in Shopian, Astanpora, Tulip Garden in Srinagar, Thajwas Glacier, Hung Park in Ganderbal, and Wullar and Watlab in Baramulla, are to be reopened immediately,” Sinha said.

Three tourist spots in the Jammu division, Devi Pindi in Reasi, Mahu Mangat in Ramban and Mughal Maidan in Kishtwar, are also to be reopened with immediate effect, he said.

“Three sites in the Kashmir division, Gurez, Athwatoo and Bangus and one site in the Jammu division, Ramkund in Ramban, will be reopened once the snow is cleared,” he added.

The Supreme Court declined to entertain petitions seeking that a first information report be filed against Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for hate speech against Muslims. The bench told the petitioners to approach the Gauhati High Court.

It also declined a request to move the matter to another High Court, warning against “convenience forum shopping”.

The petitioners had pointed to several instances of hate speech by Sarma, and to a now-deleted social media post by the BJP’s Assam unit, containing a video depicting Sarma symbolically firing at images of two Muslim men at point-blank range. Read on.

Himanta Sarma’s remarks about ‘Miyas’ make a mockery of the Constitution, writes Amrita Dutta

The National Green Tribunal disposed of challenges to the Great Nicobar Project. A six-member special bench said that it found no grounds to interfere as there are “adequate safeguards” in the environmental clearance.

The panel had been tasked by the tribunal to revisit the environmental clearance granted to the project. It noted that the project was of “strategic importance”.

Concerns have been raised about the impact of the Great Nicobar Project on the Shompen, a vulnerable tribal group, and the Nicobarese community. The project has also faced criticism for its potential impact on the island’s biodiversity, rainforests and endemic species. Read on.

Experts fear the Great Nicober Project could wipe out species newly discovered on the island, writes Vaishnavi Rathore

Congress’ former Assam unit chief Bhupen Borah withdrew his resignation from the party hours after stepping down. In his resignation letter to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge ahead of the Assembly elections, Borah had claimed that he was being “ignored” by the party leadership.

By afternoon, Jitendra Singh, who is in charge of the party’s campaign in Assam, announced that Borah had taken back his resignation.

Borah was the president of the Congress’ Assam unit between 2021 and 2025. He was replaced by Gaurav Gogoi in June. Assembly elections in the state will be held in March or April. Read on.

The Supreme Court dismissed a petition challenging a Chhattisgarh High Court judgement that said that hoardings restricting the entry of pastors and “converted Christians”, which had been put up in eight villages of the state’s Kanker district, were not “unconstitutional”. In October, the High Court ruled that the hoarding appeared to have been installed “as a precautionary measure to protect the interest of indigenous tribes”.

The top court said that the High Court order granted liberty to the petitioners to approach the statutory authority under the state Panchayat Upbandh Anusuchit Kshetron par Vistar Niyam, or PESA Rules. Read on.

Pastors say house churches in Chhattisgarh face an informal ban, writes Nolina Minj

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has said that the presence of deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in India will not deter Dhaka from pursuing its broader relations with New Delhi. Dhaka’s ties with New Delhi will not be “captive” of one matter, said BNP general secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir.

His comments come a day before the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is set to form the next government in the country. Tarique Rahman, the chairperson of the party, will be sworn in as the country’s prime minister on Tuesday. Read on.

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Before the sun rises over the jagged ridgelines around Kibber village in Himachal Pradesh’s Lahaul-Spiti district, 43-year-old Kalzang Gurmet is already on the move. On days when the monitoring site lies far from home, he leaves around five in the morning, walking across open steppe and rocky slopes for three to four hours. The early start matters. As the sun grows harsher, bird activity drops and sightings become fewer.

“Subah ka time sabse achha rehta hai,” he says in Hindi. (“Morning is the best time.”)

Kalzang Gurmet grew up in Kibber, studied history, completed a master’s degree, and returned to the village. Since 2007, he has worked with the Nature Conservation Foundation, helping scientists document birdlife across one of the highest inhabited mountain landscapes in the world.

Over the past two decades, Gurmet has played a key role in data collection and fieldwork. Along with Tanzin Thinley and other local field staff, he has walked the same transects summer after summer, counting birds in terrain where elevations exceed 4,000 metres and the growing season lasts only a few months.

That continuity, the same places, the same methods, year after year, now tells a troubling story.

The insights are documented in a study published in Ecological Applications in which the Nature Conservation Foundation researchers reports that bird densities declined across habitats, but the only statistically significant decadal decline was in the ungrazed steppe, the habitat facing the least direct human disturbance. Ungrazed steppe refers to high-altitude grassland kept free from livestock grazing, where vegetation is allowed to grow largely undisturbed over long periods.

Although often described as grasslands, the Spiti region is technically a cold desert, where vegetation occurs as rangelands, a mosaic of shrubs, alpine meadows, and sparse grasses.

The study, which spanned 2002 to 2023, tracked changes in bird populations across Spiti’s diverse habitats, shaped by both local human activity and broader climate forces.

While the study tracked bird populations over two decades, not all years were fully sampled. The analysis is based on data from 14 years of surveys between 2002 and 2023.

“We found that bird populations declined and species composition changed even in the least disturbed habitat over two decades,” said Sidharth Srinivasan, the study’s lead author and a researcher with Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysuru.

For Gurmet, who is also one of the co-authors of the study, the declining numbers of once-familiar species is more than just data points. It’s a reflection of a landscape and a way of life changing before his eyes. “We grew up with these birds,” he says, “and seeing them fade away feels like losing a part of our heritage. I hope my children will know the same Spiti I knew.”

Four habitats, one landscape

The study followed bird communities across four habitat types, crop fields, grazed meadows, grazed steppe, and ungrazed steppe, within a roughly 16-square-kilometre area around Kibber village. Together, these habitats form the agropastoral mosaic typical of the Trans-Himalaya, where farming, livestock grazing, and wildlife coexist in close proximity.

Crop fields represented the most intensive land use. At the other end of the gradient lay the ungrazed steppe, a grazing-free reserve demarcated by the Kibber community in 1998. The reserve was created as part of a community-based conservation effort to increase blue sheep populations, an important prey species for snow leopards. Over time, it has become a rare patch where land use remained unchanged for decades.

Between May and September each year, coinciding with the bird breeding season, researchers and local field staff walked fixed transects across all four habitats. Using distance-sampling methods, they recorded bird species, numbers, and how far each sighting was from the transect line. After filtering out non-breeding and rare species, the analysis included more than 17,000 individual birds belonging to 44 species.

Higher numbers, fewer specialists

The results found that bird communities differed significantly across habitats.

Crop fields supported the highest bird densities, but those communities were dominated by generalist and commensal species such as house sparrows and hill pigeons. Habitat specialists, birds closely tied to steppe vegetation and structure, were largely absent or present in very low numbers.

“Traditional farming in Spiti still seems to host birds in high densities,” Srinivasan said. “However, some specialist species are absent or present in very low densities here. This is probably because of their habitat specificity and or diet, which agricultural landscapes might not provide.”

Farming in Spiti remains largely low-intensity. Pesticide use is minimal, and inputs such as organic manure and irrigation water are common. These conditions likely increase insect availability, which benefits generalist insect-eating birds. But the authors note that such landscapes do not replace the structural complexity of natural steppe habitats that specialists require.

Ungrazed steppe, by contrast, supported both high bird densities and the highest species richness, including habitat specialists such as Tibetan sandgrouse and leaf warblers. Grazed habitats consistently fared worst, with lower bird densities and fewer specialist species.

Temporal signal

While spatial differences reflected land-use intensity, the most concerning findings emerged when the researchers examined change over time.

Comparing the early period of the study (2002-2010) with the later years (2016-2023), bird densities declined across all habitats. However, the decline was statistically significant only in the ungrazed steppe.

“This finding is worrying because it points to deeper, systemic pressures beyond land-use change alone,” Srinivasan said. “If birds aren’t doing so well in disturbed habitats, they might have the ability to choose to use other undisturbed habitats. However, if their populations are declining in undisturbed habitats, we might have to go beyond our conservation interventions of maintaining undisturbed areas.”

Several common insect-eating species, including black redstarts, desert wheatears, and leaf warblers, showed marked declines. One species, Hume’s lark, has not been detected in the study area since 2009, suggesting possible local extirpation.

Crucially, land use in the ungrazed steppe remained stable throughout the study period.

“The undisturbed habitat serves as a natural control site because land use remained stable and unchanged there,” Srinivasan explained. “Therefore, something else must be driving these changes.”

Climate stress on the roof of the world

The study cannot directly separate climate effects from land-use change in disturbed habitats, but the authors hypothesize climate change could be contributing, especially because the ungrazed steppe remained stable in land use.

Unlike land-use change, climate stress operates across entire landscapes. In Spiti, where elevations already approach the upper limits of habitable terrain, birds have little room to shift further upslope in response to warming.

“Climate change is known to make birds move their ranges upslope, tracking their historical temperatures,” Srinivasan said. “However, because the Spiti landscape already sits on the highest possible elevation on Earth, I wonder how birds here would adapt, if they do, to climate change.”

Year-to-year fluctuations in bird density were synchronised across all habitats, suggesting the influence of shared regional drivers such as weather. But long-term, on-ground weather data from the Trans-Himalaya remain sparse, limiting the ability to formally link these patterns to climate trends.

Similar studies in the Tibetan Plateau have shown that high-altitude birds are facing mounting pressures from climate change and land-use intensification. Spiti, while remote, is part of a wider pattern in the Trans-Himalaya, where the effects of warming are compounded by changing agricultural practices and infrastructure development.

A separate study from 2024 on Himalayan birds highlights that “birds and much of the flora and fauna in tropical mountain ranges are extremely temperature-sensitive and are responding to global heating rapidly.” This supports the recent findings in Spiti, where birds are already facing significant declines in both disturbed and undisturbed habitats due to climate and land-use pressures.

Rethinking conservation baselines

The findings challenge the assumption that protecting land from direct human use is sufficient to safeguard biodiversity.

“Continuous monitoring and teasing apart the mechanisms behind these declines are important next steps,” Srinivasan said. “Much needed from a conservation perspective.”

The study also cautions against framing conservation and livelihoods as opposing forces. Kibber’s agropastoral community has played a central role in maintaining both the landscape and the research.

“In 1998, they demarcated a part of their landscape as a grazing-free reserve as part of a community-based conservation initiative,” Srinivasan said. “Our on-ground team, who are from Kibber, have been walking these transects almost every summer for around two decades.”

Walking the same paths

For Kalzang Gurmet, the changes described in graphs and density estimates are felt on the ground.

As a child, he walked through grazing lands to reach school. There were ponds scattered across the landscape then, places where children played, and birds gathered. He remembers migratory birds appearing regularly. Some of those ponds have disappeared. Some of those birds no longer show up.

Today, he sometimes notices waterbirds in places where they were not seen earlier, while local species feel harder to find. He is careful not to overstate what he sees. “Maybe it’s because the weather is changing,” he says.

When unfamiliar birds appear, Kalzang photographs them and shares the images with scientists, discussing subtle differences in colour and markings. At the same time, village elders recall local names and histories tied to those birds, offering memories that stretch further back than formal surveys.

“Scientists tell us about the bird, and village elders share the history connected to it. Information comes from both sides,” Gurmet says, adding that many in the village worry the changes they are seeing may be linked to shifting weather patterns. While he does not believe the landscape is deteriorating rapidly, he remains cautious about the future. “If things are not managed, the damage will be substantial,” he says, pointing to what he sees as a growing use of chemicals in some fields, which he worries could worsen the problem.

Two decades after the first transects were laid, Kalzang still begins his mornings before sunrise, walking the same paths across the cold desert. What he sees along them has changed.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition challenging a Chhattisgarh High Court judgement from October, which said that hoardings restricting the entry of pastors and “converted Christians” that had been put up in eight villages of the state’s Kanker district were not “unconstitutional”, reported Live Law.

On October 28, a High Court bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Bibhu Datta Guru ruled that the hoardings appeared to have been installed “as a precautionary measure to protect the interest of indigenous tribes and local cultural heritage”.

The court was hearing a petition filed by a resident of the district, Digbal Tandi, who argued that the signs amounted to segregation and discrimination against members of the Christian community.

The list of villages in the petition are Kudal, Parvi, Junwani, Ghota, Ghotiya, Havechur, Musurputta and Sulangi.

On Monday, a Supreme Court bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta declined to interfere with the High Court order, saying that it granted liberty to the petitioners to approach the statutory authority under the state Panchayat Upbandh (Anusuchit Kshetron par Vistar) Niyam, or PESA Rules, reported The Indian Express.

Appearing for the state, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted that the plea before the High Court was limited. But before the Supreme Court, several new facts and dimensions had been added, and the High Court could be approached again, Live Law reported.

Advocate Colin Gonsalves, representing the petitioners, argued that the High Court had made observations on missionary activities in Adivasi areas without material on record. He questioned why the petitioners should approach the gram sabha or any other authorities, Live Law reported.

Gonsalves referred to other matters pending before the court, including cases concerning around 700 alleged attacks on pastors during prayer meetings and disputes over the burial of Adivasis who had converted to Christianity. He also claimed that there had not been a single conviction in a religious conversion case in Chhattisgarh in the past 10 years.

“You should have approached the appropriate authority under the Rules… they would have examined the matter on affidavits, on material, on evidence,” Live Law quoted Nath as saying.

Also read: House churches in Chhattisgarh face an informal ban, say pastors

The presence of Bangladesh’s deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in India will not “deter” Dhaka from pursuing its broader relations with New Delhi, Bangladesh Nationalist Party general secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told The Hindu on Monday.

Alamgir added that Dhaka’s relation with New Delhi will not be “captive” of one matter.

His comments come a day before the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is set to form the next government in the country. Tarique Rahman, the chairperson of the party, will be sworn in as the country’s prime minister on Tuesday.

An alliance led by the party swept the parliamentary elections held on February 12, winning 212 out of 299 constituencies. The Jamaat-e-Islami-led coalition emerged as the main Opposition with 77 seats.

This was the first national election in Bangladesh since Hasina was ousted and fled to India in August 2024. Her ouster came after several weeks of widespread student-led protests against her Awami League government. She had been in power for 16 years.

Nobel laureate economist Muhammad Yunus subsequently took over as the head of Bangladesh’s interim government. With the elections now complete, the interim government’s term will come to an end.

Ties between New Delhi and Dhaka had been strained after Hasina had fled to India.

Bangladesh has repeatedly demanded that India extradite Hasina after a tribunal in that country sentenced her to death for alleged crimes against humanity. Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal held Hasina guilty of having ordered a deadly crackdown on the protests against her government.

In December, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that it was for Hasina to decide whether she wanted to return to Bangladesh.

Speaking to The Hindu on Monday, Alamgir said that Bangladesh would expedite the projects that were in its interest and would also intensify its development partnership with India.

“We believe that Hasina has really committed serious human rights violations,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “There is a popular demand to punish her and we believe that India should hand her over to us.”

He added: “But not handing over Sheikh Hasina to Bangladesh will not be a deterrent to build broader relation including trade and commercial ties. We want to build even better ties.”

The general secretary of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party also said that there was a legal process for Hasina, her ministers and bureaucrats who have been accused of carrying out murders and criminal acts during the uprising in 2024, the newspaper reported.

This process will continue, he added.

After the Bangladesh Nationalist Party won the election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday was the first national leader to congratulate Rahman on his party’s victory. In a social media post, he “reaffirmed India’s continued commitment to the peace, progress and prosperity of both our peoples”.

In response, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Saturday said it was looking forward to “engaging constructively” with India to advance the bilateral relationship.

It also invited Modi, along with the heads of government of 12 other countries, to Rahman’s swearing-in ceremony. However, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will travel to Bangladesh to represent India at the ceremony, as Modi has meetings scheduled with French President Emmanuel Macron in Mumbai on Tuesday.

On Saturday, Humayun Kabir, adviser to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party chief, told PTI that with Hasina no longer in power, his country now wanted to reset ties with India. He added that both countries should work together for mutual benefit.

However, he asserted: “The change has to come from the mindset in India.”

Kabir urged India to ensure that its territory is not used by Hasina or other Awami League leaders in ways that could hurt Bangladesh’s stability.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to entertain petitions seeking that a first information report be filed against Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for hate speech against Muslims, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant told the petitioners to approach the Gauhati High Court. It asked the High Court to hear the matter on priority.

The Supreme Court declined a request to move the matter to another High Court, warning against “convenience forum shopping”, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench said that High Courts are constitutional entities meant to ensure access to justice. “Please do not undermine the sanctity of constitutional High Courts,” the legal news outlet quoted Kant as saying.

Petitions seeking action against the Bharatiya Janata Party leader were filed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Communist Party of India leader Annie Raja. The petitioners pointed to several instances of hate speech by Sarma, and to a now-deleted social media post by the BJP’s Assam unit, containing a video depicting Sarma symbolically firing at images of two Muslim men at point-blank range.

In the past month, Sarma has made a series of remarks targeting Bengali-origin Muslims in Assam, calling them “Miyas”. The Assam chief minister had said that it was his job to “make them suffer”.

In Assam, “Miya” is a derogatory word used to refer to undocumented immigrants and is exclusively directed at Muslims of Bengali origin. They are often accused of being undocumented migrants from Bangladesh.

Once a pejorative in Assam, from the common use of the honorific “Miya” among South Asian Muslims, the term has now been reappropriated by the community as a self-descriptor to refer to Muslims who migrated to Assam from Bengal during the colonial era.

Petitions before SC

The CPI(M) and Raja, in their petitions, had sought the setting up of a Special Investigation Team by the Supreme Court, arguing that state and central agencies cannot be expected to conduct an independent and impartial inquiry.

They placed on record statements made by the chief minister between 2021 and February 2026 that allegedly call for the social, economic and civic exclusion of Bengali-origin Muslims, including calls to restrict access to livelihoods, transport, land and voting rights.

The petitioners contended that the remarks have had real-world consequences, with reports of discrimination and harassment allegedly being justified by perpetrators as acting on the chief minister’s directions.

The CPI(M) and Raja also added that the remarks violate the oath taken by the chief minister to uphold the Constitution, sovereignty, integrity, fraternity and equality.

Also read:

• Himanta Sarma’s remarks about ‘Miyas’ make a mockery of the Constitution
• Himanta Sarma’s remarks about ‘Miyas’ prejudicial and ‘alarmingly hateful’, say activists, lawyers
• Assam CM’s remarks violate Constitution, urge Supreme Court, president to intervene: Ex-bureaucrats

The Congress on Sunday distanced itself from comments by party member Mani Shankar Aiyar that Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Pinarayi Vijayan would continue as Kerala’s chief minister.

Party leader Pawan Khera said that Aiyar had “no connection whatsoever” with the Congress in recent years and added that the party would return to power in the state.

The Kerala Assembly elections are expected to be held in April.

Speaking at an event inaugurated by Vijayan in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday, Aiyar said amendments should be introduced to legally secure Kerala’s leading position in implementing the panchayati raj system, PTI reported.

“But while Kerala is the first state in panchayati raj in practice, it ranks only second in law,” PTI quoted him as saying. “So in the presence of the chief minister, who I am sure will be the next chief minister, I renew my plea that in order to reinforce Kerala as the best panchayati raj state in the country, state laws should be amended based on practical experience…”

Later in the day, Congress leader Pawan Khera said on social media that Aiyar speaks and writes “purely in his personal capacity” and has no connection with the party.

Congress MP Jairam Ramesh also shared Khera’s post and said that the residents of Kerala would bring the United Democratic Front back to power.

“Let there be no doubt,” the Rajya Sabha MP said. “The people of Kerala will bring the UDF back for more responsible and responsive governance. They also know LDF [Left Democratic Front] and BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] are covert partners.”

The ruling Left Democratic Front in Kerala is led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Congress general secretary KC Venugopal described Aiyar’s remarks as his “personal opinion” and not the party’s position, ANI reported on Monday.

“Mani Shankar Aiyar is not currently in the Congress party,” the news agency quoted him as saying.

Sachin Pilot, appointed by the party as senior observer for the Kerala Assembly elections, also said that Aiyar was not part of the Congress, according to ANI.

On Monday, Aiyar said his remark that Vijayan would be the next chief minister had been “blown out of proportion” by the media, PTI reported.

He said the comment was “half a line” in his speech and had been exaggerated. However, Aiyar added that the Left Democratic Front government in Kerala was doing “outstanding work”, the news agency reported.

The former MP also said that only Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge could remove him from the party.

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a petition filed by gangster Abu Salem seeking premature release from prison in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, NDTV reported.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta directed him to move the Bombay High Court for relief, India Today reported.

It further refused Salem’s request for urgent directions, saying that his conviction under the now-repealed Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act and criminal record did not justify special consideration.

In September 2017, a special court under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act in Mumbai sentenced Salem to life imprisonment for his role in the blasts that killed more than 250 persons.

He was extradited from Portugal in November 2005.

Salem had filed a petition claiming the benefit of three years and 16 days of remission earned for good conduct toward the computation of his 25-year jail sentence, after completion of which he would be eligible for premature release, Live Law reported.

Remission is the reduction of the duration of a prison sentence without changing its nature, allowing for earlier release.

The gangster also cited the decision by the Supreme Court in July 2022, which relied on the extradition treaty between India and Portugal. The terms of this treaty had held that Salem would have to be released on completion of 25 years in jail.

However, the Maharashtra government has maintained that Salem had not completed 25 years.

At an earlier hearing, the Supreme Court had asked Salem to produce rules in Maharashtra under which remission could be granted to someone convicted under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act.

On Monday, the counsel for Salem submitted Rule 4 of the 1962 Maharashtra Prisons Remission System Rules, which outlines the types of remission, Live Law reported.

His counsel said that he had sought ordinary and annual good conduct remission.

During the hearing, the bench asked against which order the gangster had come before it. In response, his counsel said that Salem had moved the High Court with a petition for premature release, according to the legal news outlet.

In the High Court, Salem had sought a direction for the authorities to specify a release date after completing 25 years, saying that his right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution was being breached as he was being kept in prison beyond the 25-year jail term as agreed by the Indian authorities while signing the treaty with Portugal.

However, the High Court in July 2025 prima facie observed that Salem had not completed 25 years, Live Law reported.

It referred to the Supreme Court’s order, which took the date of Salem’s arrest as October 12, 2005, to provide for the premature release.

In the Supreme Court on Monday, Salem’s counsel said that the gangster had surpassed 10 months of his jail term.

“It is the case of habeas corpus, illegal custody,” Live Law quoted his counsel as adding.

The bench asked him to file an application in the High Court.

During the hearing, Salem’s counsel claimed that the gangster had been in illegal custody for more than 10 months.

“You have stayed for 25 years for not doing something good to the society,” Live Law quoted Nath as having said verbally. “You have [been] convicted under TADA.”

The case

In June 2017, the special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act court had found Salem and five others guilty of conspiring and carrying out a series of bomb blasts across Mumbai in 1993, which ended up killing over 250 persons, Live Law reported.

Salem was convicted for offences punishable under sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act, the Arms Act, the Explosive Substances Act and the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.

According to the prosecution, Salem had transported and distributed arms and ammunition used in the blast.

In September 2017, the special court had sentenced Salem to life imprisonment.

This came after he was extradited from Portugal.

In December 2002, the Union government issued a gazette notification under the 1962 Extradition Act, directing that its provisions would apply to the Portuguese government, Live Law reported.

At the time, former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani assured Portugal that it would exercise its powers conferred by Indian laws to ensure that if extradited for trial in India, Salem would not be given a death penalty or imprisonment for a term beyond 25 years.

The National Green Tribunal on Monday disposed of challenges to the Great Nicobar Project, saying that it found no grounds to interfere as there are “adequate safeguards” in the environmental clearance, The Indian Express reported.

The six-member special bench noted the “strategic importance” of the project, saying that the problems were dealt with by a committee. The panel had been tasked by the tribunal to revisit the environmental clearance granted to the project.

The Great Nicobar Project includes the construction of new townships, a power plant, a greenfield international airport and a transshipment port.

It is expected to use 166 sq km of the Great Nicobar island, which is part of the Nicobar Islands. The island falls within the Sundaland Biodiversity Hotspot, spanning the western half of the Indonesian archipelago.

Concerns have been raised about the impact of large infrastructure projects on the Shompen, a vulnerable tribal group, and the Nicobarese community. The project has also faced criticism for its potential impact on the island’s biodiversity, rainforests and endemic species.

On Monday, the National Green Tribunal directed the authorities and regulatory agencies to ensure “full and strict” compliance with the conditions laid down in the environmental clearance, The Indian Express reported.

The tribunal’s ruling came on two pleas filed by environmental activist Ashish Kothari alleging that the 2019 Island Coastal Regulation Zone notification was being violated.

The activist had sought that hundreds of hectares earmarked for the proposed port, airport, a township for defence and other residential areas be excluded from the project because their locations are within the coastal regulation zone where such construction is prohibited, The Indian Express reported.

Kothari also alleged that the tribunal’s 2023 order for the project’s environmental clearance to be reviewed had not been complied with. The committee set up for the task had examined select aspects of the project’s environmental impacts and not the entire clearance process, the newspaper quoted the activist as having argued.

Also watch: True Story: How we investigated the disappearing corals of Great Nicobar

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Sunday urged the Union government to grant citizenship to eligible Sri Lankan Tamils living in the state and provide legal clarity on their status.

“They have been living on Indian soil for more than 30 years,” Stalin wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Of these, 40% were born on our soil! Therefore, they should not be considered illegal immigrants. The Indian government should come forward to provide legal solutions, including citizenship, for them.”

Hon’ble @PMOIndia Thiru. @NarendraModi, please provide a humane legal solution for Sri Lankan Tamils living in Tamil Nadu for decades by enabling citizenship pathways, granting long term visa relief, and removing administrative barriers that keep them in legal uncertainty.… pic.twitter.com/9L83qONtlG

— M.K.Stalin - தமிழ்நாட்டை தலைகுனிய விடமாட்டேன் (@mkstalin) February 15, 2026

Stalin described the matter as one of “profound humanitarian, constitutional and national importance”, The Hindu reported.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief asked the Union government to withdraw the 1986 administrative instructions that stopped Sri Lankan Tamils from applying for citizenship.

Stalin also sought an executive clarification to waive passport and visa requirements, where appropriate, for citizenship or long-term visa applications based on verified identity documents issued by the Tamil Nadu government, The Hindu reported.

He asked that suitable powers be delegated to the district-level authorities to streamline the processing of applications.

Stalin further requested that the Union government formally clarify the legal status of registered Sri Lankan Tamil citizens “sheltered” in India up to January 9, 2015.

“These individuals have lived in India with dignity, discipline and deep cultural affinity for more than four decades,” he said. “The continued characterisation of their status as irregular does not reflect the humanitarian context of their entry nor the state-sanctioned nature of their stay.”

Thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils have been living in India since 1983 after fleeing an ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. As of Sunday, about 89,000 persons from the community were in Tamil Nadu, according to Stalin.

Stalin said that while successive Tamil Nadu governments, with the support of the Union government, had provided shelter, subsistence support, education and healthcare to the Sri Lankan Tamils, several refugees continue to face prolonged legal uncertainty without access to durable solutions such as citizenship or long-term visas.

An advisory committee constituted by the state government examined their status and found that several categories of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees were eligible for regularisation under existing legal frameworks, The New Indian Express reported.

These include persons born in India before June 30, 1987, those born to one Indian parent, spouses of Indian citizens, persons of Indian origin having lineage documentation and others eligible for long-term visas.

The chief minister highlighted that the 2003 amendment to the Citizenship Act, which introduced the category of “illegal migrant”, had the unintended consequence of retrospectively affecting those who entered India under extraordinary humanitarian circumstances with “the tacit approval of the Union government”, The Hindu reported.

The debate and voting on the no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition against Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will be taken up on March 9, The New Indian Express quoted Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju as saying on Sunday.

The minister said that it is a rule to take up such a motion on the first day after the House reconvenes.

The second part of the Budget Session of Parliament is scheduled from March 9 to April 2. The session began on January 28 and went into recess on Thursday.

Rijiju said that the government intends to proceed with its legislative agenda once the motion against the speaker has been disposed of.

He described the upcoming sittings of the House as “interesting”, stating that several important legislations would be introduced for debate and passage.

“We will bring some important bills, including one critical bill,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “We will not disclose now as to what the bill is, but we will bring up one very important business in the second part. We will pass all these bills.”

He was also quoted as saying that if Opposition parties continued protests in way similar to that seen during the first part of the session, “we will go for the guillotine”.

“It will be a loss for them,” he added.

The first part of the session saw repeated disruptions.

Since February 2, the Opposition has been protesting against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi not being allowed to quote an excerpt from an unpublished memoir of former Indian Army chief MM Naravane about the political decision-making during the 2020 border tensions between India and China.

The excerpts from the book that Gandhi had been attempting to quote from had been reported in December 2023 and were quoted by The Caravan magazine on February 1.

BJP MPs had objected to the Congress leader speaking on the matter, arguing that he cannot quote from a book that had not yet been released.

On February 5, the Lok Sabha passed the Motion of Thanks on the president’s address without Prime Minister Narendra Modi giving his customary reply, as Opposition MPs continued their protest. This was the first time since 2004 that the prime minister has not replied to the motion in the Lok Sabha.

On February 10, the Opposition submitted a notice indicating its intention to move a no-confidence motion against Birla, citing the “blatantly partisan manner” of conducting proceedings in the House.

“On several occasions, leaders of Opposition parties have just not been allowed to speak, which is their democratic right in Parliament,” the notice said.

According to Article 94 of the Constitution, a Lok Sabha speaker can be removed if the House passes a no-confidence resolution. However, a 14-day notice needs to be given indicating the intention to move the resolution.

The final voter list in Tamil Nadu will be published on February 23 following the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls, the Election Commission said on Sunday.

The poll panel said that following a January 30 order by the Supreme Court, it had displayed the list of persons in the logical discrepancies category at gram panchayats centres, public places and taluka/sub-divisional offices, including ward offices in urban areas.

“Logical discrepancies” flagged by the Election Commission during the voter list revision include mismatches in parents’ names, low age gap with parents and the number of children of the parents being above six.

The draft electoral rolls for Tamil Nadu were published on December 19. The names of 97.3 lakh persons were removed from the draft lists in the state.

In its January 30 order, the Supreme Court had directed that persons facing “logical discrepency” notices be given 10 days from the date of its display to submit their documents for verification.

On Sunday, Chief Electoral Officer Archana Patnaik said that in line with the court's directives, the lists had been displayed and persons had been given 10 days to make their objections and submit documents.

Assembly elections will be held in Tamil Nadu in April or May.

The Election Commission has suspended seven officials in West Bengal for alleged serious misconduct, dereliction of duty and misuse of statutory powers during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, PTI reported on Monday.

The officials had been working as assistant electoral registration officers for the poll panel. They are state government employees deputed by the Election Commission to work on election duties, including the revision of voter lists.

The officials were working in the Samserganj, Farakka, Maynaguri, Suti, Canning Purba and Debra Assembly constituencies, ANI reported.

The poll panel asked the state Chief Secretary Nandini Chakravarty to initiate disciplinary action against the officials.

The West Bengal government and the Election Commission have been at odds over the special intensive revision of voter lists.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has accused the poll panel of harassing voters and endangering democratic rights through the voter roll revision process.

The state’s draft electoral rolls were published on December 16. They showed that more than 58 lakh voters were removed after being marked dead, shifted or absent.

The deletion from the draft roll is provisional and citizens can object to their names being removed from the list. Citizens whose names have been dropped from the list can file their claims and objections.

The Assembly elections in the state are expected to be held in April or May.

Besides West Bengal, the special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 11 other states and Union Territories.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly elections in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday renewed his criticism of the Union government about the trade deal with the United States, alleging that it amounted to “a betrayal of India’s farmers”.

India and the US agreed on a framework for the interim trade deal on February 2. While the agreement has reduced US tariffs on Indian goods to 18% from 50%, Opposition parties have expressed concerns that the interests of farmers and small and medium enterprises may be jeopardised through the agreement.

Gandhi on Sunday referred to the proposed import of Dried Distillers’ Grains, and asked what this would mean in practice. He questioned whether Indian cattle would be fed distillers’ grain derived from genetically modified American corn and whether that would effectively integrate India’s dairy supply chain with the US agricultural system.

The Congress leader also raised concerns about the possible import of genetically modified soya oil, and asked what the consequences would be for soya farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and elsewhere in the country. He questioned how they would withstand another price shock.

Gandhi further asked what the term “additional products” meant in the context of the deal, and whether it indicated pressure to open up pulses and other sensitive crops to US imports over time.

He also asked whether removing “non-trade barriers” would require India to dilute its position on genetically modified crops, weaken procurement systems, or undermine minimum support prices and bonuses in the future.

“Once this door opens, how do we prevent it from widening every year?” he asked. “Will there be safeguards, or will more crops steadily be put on the table in each negotiation round?”

On February 12, Gandhi had accused Modi of being “anti-farmer”, and of “selling” the interests of the country in the trade deal with the US.

Indian goods had been facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%, including a punitive levy of 25% imposed in August for purchasing Russian oil. Trump had on February 7 removed the additional 25% punitive levy, bringing the effective US tariff rate on Indian imports down to 18%.

On February 4, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said in Parliament that the interests of sensitive sectors such as agriculture and dairy will be protected under the trade deal between India and the US.

However, farmer unions have alleged that the framework contradicts repeated assurances by Goyal that agriculture and dairy would be kept outside of the agreement.

Also read: How India’s tariff regime can be reworked to the country’s advantage

In over a decade of the stewardship of prime minister Narendra Modi, India’s criminal justice system has become nakedly, unapologetically, even stridently communally partisan. This partisanship is not new. Virtually every regime – with the arguable partial exception of Jawaharlal Nehru’s tenure as prime minister and the Left state governments – has displayed this partisanship.

However, after 2014, the Indian criminal justice system has bared its unrepentant, even defiant partisan character.

There are no pretences now. There is no need for them.

One of the striking ways in which the rankly communal partisanship of state institutions manifests is in the many ways that the state has ensured impunity for perpetrators of grave hate crimes and mass murder that target India’s Muslim minorities. I will illustrate this with two stories of how impunity was sought for persons convicted for the gravest mass hate crimes. Both relate to the mass murder in the Gujarat carnage of 2002.

The first is the aborted bid to secure remission for the mass rape of Bilkis Bano and the slaughter of 14 members of her family including her young daughter.

And the second is the story of the acquittal of Maya Kodnani, a former minister in the cabinet of chief minister Narendra Modi in Gujarat, who was convicted for the largest single massacre during the communal carnage in 2002 in Gujarat. She was slapped with perhaps the highest punishment given to a senior public servant in communal riots in the history of the Indian republic, of 28 years of life imprisonment.

She is now fully acquitted of all charges.

Remission on Independence Day

The Gujarat government celebrated the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence in an unorthodox way. It did this by setting free 11 men who had been sentenced to life in prison for gang-raping Bilkis Bano who was five-months pregnant and five other women, and murdering 14 members of her family – including smashing her three-year-old daughter’s head with a stone.

As I heard the stunning news of this Independence Day remission, I began to wonder what freedom meant. Freedom from what? Freedom for whom?

My thoughts went then to words I wrote after the Bombay High Court had confirmed in 2017 the conviction of these 11 men for the unspeakable crimes that they had perpetrated on Bilkis Bano, her three-year-old child and 14 members of her extended family:

“Nightmares still haunt Bilkis Bano,” I wrote, “and even now she gets sick when she remembers that day in 2002”. In Radhikpur village in Dahod, 200 km from Ahmedabad, her neighbours had set fire to all of around 60 Muslim homes there. As she and her terrified family ran into the fields behind their house, she turned around for one last look at their burning home.

In the exodus that followed, Bilkis Bano and her family sought refuge first at the residence of the village sarpanch, then in a school in the village of Chunadi, and thereafter in the village mosque of Kuvajal. Here, Shamim, her cousin, delivered a baby girl in the house of a midwife.

The next day, the family fled again, knowing that they were not safe. Hiding in the shadows and the overgrowth of forests all the way and avoiding the big highways, they tried to reach a Muslim-majority settlement. Along the scary journey, they were shielded and provided for by compassionate people.

As Special Judge UD Salvi of the Mumbai sessions court observed in his judgement in 2008, despite its gruesomeness, the case also brought to light instances of human kindness shown by neighbours and acquaintances of victims of the massacre who gave shelter to those on the other side of the communal divide. The search for a sanctuary set them on the path to Pannivel village. But they were never to reach their refuge.

On March 3, 2002, on the kachha road leading to the village, two truckloads of 20 to 30 people brandishing swords and sickles obstructed their truck. “Aa rahya Musalmano, emane maaro, kaato,” they shouted – These are the Muslims, kill them, cut them.

They were all men from their village, people they knew and had been raised with. Among them was the son of a medical practitioner who treated Bilkis Bano’s father and lived right across the street; a man who owned a bangle shop in the village; another who owned a hotel in the neighbourhood where Bilkis Bano and her family resided; and the husband of an elected member of gram panchayat. Bilkis Bano would say years later that what rankled her most in her memories of that day was that men she had known since she was a child were the ones who brutalised her so mercilessly.

Bilkis Bano was clutching her three-year-old daughter, Saleha, in her arms when one of the men snatched the little girl away and smashed her head on the ground, killing her instantly. Three men, all known to her and from her village, grabbed Bilkis Bano and tore her clothes away even as she pleaded that she was pregnant. They also ignored her entreaties that they were like her brothers and uncles, and they raped her by turn. In the mayhem around her, the 14 members of her family were being raped, molested and hacked to death by others in the mob. Shamim, who had delivered a child the day before, and her infant child were also killed. When Bilkis Bano ultimately lost consciousness, the assailants took her for dead and after their pillaging, left the scene of the carnage.

When she regained consciousness, she found herself naked, surrounded by the corpses of her family members. She covered her body in a petticoat lying nearby and ran up a hillock, and spent a night there in dread, foreboding and mourning. The next day, she came upon an Adivasi woman near a hand pump when looking for water. The woman gave her some clothes. She then spotted a uniformed police officer and approached him for help. He took her to the Limkheda police station in his vehicle.

Bilkis Bano was the lone witness and survivor of eight gangrapes and 14 murders. She knew the names of her attackers, and told the policeman all that had happened in painful detail. But the head constable, Somabhai Gori, refused to register her complaint. He despatched her instead to a relief camp, where she was reunited with her distraught husband, Yakub Rasool, and told him of her unthinkable suffering, and how they had lost their daughter and so many members of their family.

Two days after the killings, some local photographers found some of the bodies of the massacred family – and it was this public exposure that forced the police to act. Bilkis Bano was devastated as she identified the bodies of several members of her family, including her three-year old daughter. Four days after her rape, she was medically examined at Godhra Civil Hospital and biological samples were sent to the local pathology lab, after she had been sent to the Godhra relief camp.

Meanwhile, no inquest was carried out as required by law and the bodies were left unguarded to rot away. Doctors performing the post-mortem did not collect any blood or biological samples, and recorded evidence and opinions that they knew to be false. It was later proved that the bodies were buried in unmarked mass graves on the orders of the police.

In 2004, when the bodies were exhumed as part of a fresh investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation, they found that none had skulls. It seems that they had been decapitated after the post-mortem to prevent identification, and salt had been sprinkled on the corpses so that they would decompose quickly. A prosecution witness testified that he was taken by the police to the place where the bodies were buried in unmarked graves, and he found two doctors there as well. He buried the corpses with the help of two other men the police had brought in to dig the pits, and they were each paid Rs 200 for their labours and silence.

Fifteen years later, the high court was to describe the policemen as “villains” who “wanted to suppress the fact of rape committed on Bilkis”. They manipulated evidence, ensured the post-mortem of the dead was not done properly, and they also did not take Bilkis Bano to the crime spot so that she could identify it, even though she was at the police station at that time. This “tainted” their investigation, reflecting “dishonesty and callousness”.

Bilkis Bano was 21 years old, and five months pregnant, when she was raped and her 3yo daughter killed along with six others from the family.

Bilkis Bano fought a long battle for justice.#StandWithBilkisBano pic.twitter.com/SxZ7q8RnUO

— Natasha Badhwar (@natashabadhwar) August 17, 2022

Fifteen days after her gang rape, Bilkis Bano finally managed to register her statement to the police in the relief camp. The police made her place her thumb impression on a blank sheet, and obliterated all significant details in her statement like the names of the men who had raped her. She could do nothing at that time as she was both unread and powerless. The police dismissed her repeated pleas and ultimately, the judicial magistrate on March 25, 2003, closed the case for want of evidence, claiming that there were inconsistencies.

Undeterred, Bilkis Bano moved the Supreme Court with the assistance of the National Human Rights Commission. The Supreme Court ordered the Gujarat government to stop the state investigation, as the Criminal Investigation Department had by 2003 begun to harass and intimidate Bilkis Bano and her family. Two months later, it asked for an independent investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the murders and rapes. The Central Bureau of Investigation team seized police documents, photographs, reports and evidence, recorded the statements of Bilkis Bano and other witnesses, and exhumed the remains of seven of the victims, four females and three children. The bodies of the other seven were never found.

The investigation was exemplary both for its independence, fairness and professionalism. “On May 12, 2004, the CBI submitted its final report to the Supreme Court in which it catalogued the complicity and involvement of the Gujarat government in the cover-up which followed the March 2002 crime,” reads a report in The Wire. “Most significantly, it asked that the criminal trial be held outside the state… that the government of Narendra Modi, who was chief minister at the time, could not even be trusted with the conduct of court proceedings in the matter. The Supreme Court concurred and on August 6, 2004, ordered the trial venue shifted from Gujarat to Maharashtra.”

For six years, much of which she and her family were forced to spend in hiding, Bilkis Bano fought her case with robust and unshaken resolve, supported all along by fine activists like Farah Naqvi and Gagan Sethi of Jan Vikas. These human rights workers did all they could to bolster her morale, and guide her through the intricacies of the legal process. Yakub Rasool, Bilkis Bano’s husband, remained steady in his support to her through these many years of legal battle. The family was in effect exiled from their village, because they would not be safe there. They shift from place to place, their identities hidden, their faces covered when they appear in public meetings and courts.

On January 18, 2008, the special court in Mumbai sentenced the 11 accused to life imprisonment (one had died), and incarcerated a policeman for three years for trying to destroy evidence. This case marked the rarest instance in which sexual violence during a communal massacre was punished. Even so, the special court refused to punish the doctors and policepersons accused of burying the bodies of the victims to destroy evidence of the crime. It did, however, convict Somabhai Gori, the head constable of Limkheda police station, who had refused to take down Bilkis Bano’s initial complaint. It is this part of its order that the Bombay High Court reversed 15 years after the hate crime.

The Central Bureau of Investigation, in its appeal, sought the death penalty for the 11 convicts. They argued that the case was one of mass murder as 14 members of a family had been killed, and that the riots had caused an exodus and, thus, belonged to the rarest of rare category. The High Court did not concur, and maintained the punishment of imprisonment for life. “We do agree that it is a rare massacre manifesting ugly animosity and hostility,” it noted.

But it added that the convicted men are not “history-sheeters or hard-core criminals”. They were part of “a mob on account of the Godhra incident… in search of Muslims. They were boiling with revenge… We do agree that the crime is uncommon and a large number of persons from the Muslim community were murdered, however, the sentencing policy is also required to be balanced on the scale of proportionality… We also cannot be unmindful of the fact that the incident occurred in 2002, 15 years have elapsed since then. These accused have been in custody all this while. Looking to this fact, after a gap of 15 years, we are not inclined to enhance the sentence”.

In a stark but telling coincidence, the day after the Bilkis Bano ruling, the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for four men convicted of the gruesome gangrape and murder of a paramedical student in Delhi on December 16, 2012, to celebratory headlines across the country. The judges described this as a “barbaric crime” that had created a “tsunami of shock”. That it was, no doubt, but it is hard to understand why one crime – in which the face of a child was also smashed, eight people gangraped and 14 people killed in a frenzy of mob hate – was more grievous than the other.

Surely, the learned bench could not be suggesting that “boiling for revenge” after the Godhra train burning created a context that somehow mitigated the hate crimes that followed? Some unconfirmed news reports indicate that Bilkis Bano and Yakub Rasool would have preferred the death penalty for the rapists and killers. But human rights workers and feminists (including this writer) are emphatic that they do not support the demand for the death penalty for any crime, even those as brutal as those endured both by Bilkis Bano and the young woman in Delhi.

The judicial triumph of upholding the life terms of the killers but also punishment for the policemen and doctors who tried to save them was made possible because of many extraordinary people. Bilkis Bano and Yakub Rasool’s singular and exemplary courage and perseverance. The steady and understated – and, therefore, even more precious – support they received from human rights activists like Farah Naqvi and Gagan Sethi. The unparalleled role played by the National Human Rights Commission under the leadership of the late Justice JS Verma. The independence and professionalism of the officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation. And the contribution of judges at various levels and times.

Bilkis Bano’s rapists were out for about 1000 days each before they were all released for ‘good behaviour’.

And you thought justice for sexual harassment, assault / murder cases was easy. pic.twitter.com/f0BJr17uTf

— Chinmayi Sripaada (@Chinmayi) August 10, 2023

But it is sobering and instructive also to remember that all of this became ultimately possible only because the case was moved out of Gujarat where, as this judgement establishes, police officers felt free to destroy evidence and protect those who committed the gravest hate crimes. There can be little doubt that they derived their impunity from the top. The judgement is a glowing endorsement of what institutions of secular democracy can accomplish if they are fair-minded, just and compassionate. But it is also a reminder of what transpires if these are wilfully subverted.

It calls to question once again claims that courts have established the freedom from guilt of those on whose watch the carnage of 2002 unfolded, but even more importantly, on whose watch justice against the perpetrators of these crimes was deliberately, cynically and – yes – criminally subverted. With Amit Shah as home minister and Narendra Modi as chief minister, did not officials at various levels feel secure in committing and enabling hate crimes, and cynically destroying the process of just investigation, prosecution and trial?

I wrote at that time that we – the citizens of India – also “need to carry on our conscience the reality that her tormentors may be in jail but she and her surviving family remain banished, probably for a lifetime, from the village of their birth and from a normal life. For 15 years, they have rarely been able to live in one place. They keep shifting from one secret location to another, and there seems no end to this kind of life”. Fear, her husband Yakub Rasool told The Indian Express, has become a “constant presence” in their lives. “Why don’t people understand that we don’t have any security?… Do you know that the convicts were not always kept in Mumbai jails? They kept getting parole. We are not free. When they are out on parole and in the area, we feel insecure,” he said.

And I recalled that Bilkis Bano was wistful as she remembered her village. “I miss Randhikpur… Yaad to bahu aave che pan shun kariye? Mane daar lage che.” I miss my village very much but what can be done? I am afraid. “Think of this”, I wrote. Fifteen years had passed, “but Bilkis Bano and Yakub Rasool remain refugees with their children, fugitives from hate, probably for their lifetimes”.

Bilkis Bano had declared after the special court verdict in 2008 sentencing the accused men to life imprisonment, “This judgement does not mean the end of hatred that I know still exists in the hearts and minds of many people… but it does mean that somewhere, somehow, justice can prevail.”

I wrote after the High Court confirmed life sentences for the rapists and killers of her family, “Bilkis Bano and her husband may have heroically seized justice from a system that very rarely cedes this to survivors of communal violence. However we – the state, the courts, you and I – have done nothing to free them from a life of fear and exile”.

Fast-forward now to the time that Bilkis Bano’s killers, after spending 14 years in prison – with frequent interludes of parole – walked free.

As her rapists and the murderers of 14 members of her family including a three-year-old child stepped outside the jail gates, crowds greeted them with garlands and sweets at the office of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The BJP legislator CK Raolji defended the remission recommendation with the words: “They were Brahmins and Brahmins are known to have good sanskaar (values). It might have been someone’s ill intention to corner and punish them…”

Bilkis Bano, who had earned the admiration and gratitude of the nation for the extraordinary courage with which she fought a 15-year-long battle for justice against all odds, now said she was “bereft of words” and “numb”.

“Today, I can only say this – how can justice for any woman end like this? I trusted the highest courts in our land. I trusted the system, and I was slowly learning to live with my trauma. The release of these convicts has taken from me my peace and shaken my faith in justice. My sorrow and my wavering faith are not for myself alone but for every woman struggling for justice in the courts,” Bano declared to Article 14. “I appeal to the Gujarat government, please undo this harm. Give me back my right to live without fear and in peace. Please ensure that my family and I are kept safe.”

Her lawyer Shobha Gupta said that “we thought about appealing against lesser punishment – 14 murders, five gang-rapes, a pregnant woman gang raped – we felt life imprisonment was mild and inadequate for the heinous offence. But the thought was that let peace come, let her live peacefully now, let us accept the judgment and allow the matter to have closure”. She continued, “We have seen cases where the death penalty has been given for a single murder. This was a serious crime. Fourteen murders, gang rapes, the gang rape of a pregnant woman and her child thrashed on a stone and murdered in front of her eyes. What more should there be for it to be a death penalty case? In my practice of 25-26 years, this was 100% a death penalty case”.

She continued, “They have been convicted by one court, a second court, and a third court and their review (petition) was dismissed. Every single court has made serious observations against them. Do you not ask the victim that we know you have suffered for the past 20 years and (has) safety concerns?...It is a matter of judicial record that she is living the life of a nomad, running from place to place to ensure that she is surviving. We don’t know the committee officers who passed the order, but isn’t it a constitutional duty to consider and ensure that she is feeling safe and has a sense of fulfilment?”

She also expressed grief at the public celebration. “For what? They are convicted of rape and murder by the highest court in the country. My heart bleeds when I see this kind of society. A gang rape convict, a person convicted for 14 murders, comes out and is publicly facilitated and honoured…What is happening to our society? Even that village has women. What would women be thinking? How could women dare after this to make a complaint?”

When influential voices from India and the world questioned the Gujarat government for its decision to recommend the remission of the sentence of Bilkis Bano’s tormentors, it diverted responsibility to the Supreme Court and the union government. It said that the Supreme Court had asked the state government to consider the remission application, for which it established a committee headed by the district collector and with two BJP MLAs as members. The committee was unanimous in recommending their premature remission. The proposal was sent to the union government, where it was approved by the union home minister headed by Amit Shah. The file moved with exceptional speed, as though to meet the deadline of Independence Day.

The Supreme Court on January 8, 2024, just short of five months after the remission of 11 convicts sentenced to life imprisonment for the gang rape of Bilkis Bano and murder of her family, reversed this order. It directed that the men be returned to jail within two weeks of the order. It held firstly that the Gujarat government was not the appropriate government to consider the remission petition.

It annulled the May 2022 order of the Supreme Court that had directed the Gujarat government to consider the remission petitions, ruling that this was obtained through fraud and suppression of facts before the court. It held that the appropriate government for considering the remission petitions in the instant case was Maharashtra and expected that it would consider the remission petitions in accordance with law and the guidelines laid down by the Court.

The grounds cited by the highest court for striking down this remission order are for me disappointingly technical rather than delving into deeper questions of the ethics of punishment and reformation and laying down guidelines for the future.

Justice BV Nagarathna, who authored the judgment, however does quote the Greek philosopher Plato to justify directing the convicts back to prison: “... punishment is to be inflicted not for the sake of vengeance but for the sake of prevention and reformation. In his treatise, Plato reasons that the lawgiver, as far as he can, ought to imitate the doctor who does not apply his drug with a view to still the pain only, but to do the patient good”.

The sentencing, bail and acquittal of Maya Kodnani

A gynaecologist by training, Maya Kodnani was a member of the Gujarat legislature at the time of the Gujarat communal carnage of 2002. She was later elevated to the position of a minister for women and child welfare in chief minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet.

Maya Kodnani went on to be convicted of instigating and leading the largest single communal massacre in Gujarat, in the village Naroda Patiya in which 89 people, the majority of whom were women and children. Her punishment, of 28 years imprisonment, was probably the highest penalty for a public official in anti-Muslim violence in the history of the Indian republic.

Come 2014 with a change in the government in Delhi and first she is given long-term bail (in the way that Sadhvi Pragya Thakur who was charged with terror crimes was also freed from jail). Her sentence is suspended.

And then she is acquitted of all crimes.

Kodnani spent a cumulative total of approximately three years and five months in jail across two separate periods and is at the time of writing a free woman.

#JustIN | A special court of Gujarat has ACQUITTED all 68 accused including former minister Maya Kodnani in the 2002 Gujarat Riots-Naroda Gam Massacre Case.#GujaratRiots #NarodaPatiya pic.twitter.com/uxJFoWuGDR

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) April 20, 2023

The brief facts are that on February 28, 2002, a day after the fateful fire broke out in a train compartment in the Sabarmati Express at Godhra killing around 59 people, a murderous mob of nearly 1500 people gathered in Naroda Patiya, a Muslim majority neighbourhood in the suburbs of Ahmedabad.

The law took many years to catch up with Maya Kodnani. After the carnage, chief minister Modi thought it fit to elevate Kodnani, a gynaecologist, into his cabinet. I do not know if the irony was intentional, that she was allotted the portfolio of women and child welfare even though she was being investigated for leading a massacre in which the majority of victims were women and children.

Finally, in 2008, the Supreme Court-appointed a Special Investigation Team led by former CBI director RK Raghavan to investigate the carnage. In February 2009, the SIT declared Kodnani an absconder after she failed to appear for her deposition. A month later, the Gujarat High Court revoked her anticipatory bail and she was arrested. She resigned as minister of state for women and child development.

According to the Special Investigation Team report, a crowd had gathered in Naroda Patiya to enforce a bandh called by the Vishva Hindu Parishad to protest the deaths in fire of persons in the train at Godhra the day before. Maya Kodnani, then an MLA, and VHP leader Jaideep Patel arrived separately at the site in their respective vehicles. Eleven witnesses confirmed that both of them made hateful speeches to instigate the already agitated mob. Kodnani allegedly incited the mob to kill Muslims.

The carnage that followed went on for 10 hours. At least 97 people (according to the official toll) were killed, many of them stabbed and burnt alive. An uncounted number were looted, raped and sexually assaulted. A local mosque was vandalised.

Witnesses testified to the special SIT court that she handed out swords to rioters, exhorted them to attack Muslims and at one point fired a pistol. Even phone records placed Kodnani in Naroda at the time of the incident, contrary to what Amit Shah was to testify later.

I quote from a couple of witness statements. We “went near Natraj Hotel, saw a mob of 5 to 10 thousand persons, Mayaben came there in (a) Maruti Frontie with her PA. They got down from the car. By seeing her (sic.), the people who were standing there shouted the slogans of ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Mayaben delivered a provoking speech, the gist of speech spelling her instigation to the mob (sic.) is, “I have seen dead bodies of Kar Sevaks at Godhra. You Ram Bhakta – devotees of Ram should kill Muslims here, cut them, as the Babri Masjid had been demolished, the Masjid here also should be destroyed, I am with you etc.”, you will have no difficulty. She then left”.

And another witness: “Dressed in a white saree with a saffron scarf on her neck she then went in her white Maruti car to..... the S.T Workshop Gate. Mayaben .....was followed by a Trax Jeep. Mayaben gave (a) signal to the mob near Natraj and she called upon the mob (near) the Gate of S.T. Workshop by indicating to them to come. About 100 leaders came ....Mayaben was discussing something with all of them and then instructed her P.A., the P.A. took out the weapons from the Trax Jeep, the weapons were swords, Bhala (spears),Trishul (tridents), revolvers etc. Under the instructions, her P.A. gave all these weapons to the leaders of the mob.. After Mayaben went away, the men of the mob including the P.A. had attacked (the) Nurani (Masjid). ...Mayaben said “Kill them. I am and will be with you always. You will always have my backing.”

In August 29, 2012, the special SIT court judge, Jyotsna Yagnik, convicted Kodnani under Indian Penal Code sections for murder, conspiracy, and inciting hatred. She was held to be the “kingpin” and “principal conspirator” of the massacre. The judgement said Kodnani was “proved to be the kingpin of the entire communal riot and one of the principal conspirators who has actively instigated the rioters and has abetted them to form unlawful assembly to execute the conspiracy hatched under her leadership with other co-conspirators. Judge Yagnik sentenced Kodnani to 28 years in prison (10 years for unlawful assembly + 18 years for murder, to run consecutively).”

In April 2013, the Gujarat state government initially prepared to file an appeal seeking the death penalty for her but withdrew this decision in May 2013. In 2021, senior advocate Kapil Sibal highlighted in the Supreme Court this failure to challenge her acquittal, as unmistakable indications of executive partisanship. But in November 2013, she was granted interim bail for three months to treat intestinal tuberculosis and heart health issues.

Her fate turned after Modi’s election in May 2014. On July 30, 2014, the Gujarat High Court suspended her sentence and granted her regular bail on grounds of ill health. It noted that she was suffering from “intestinal tuberculosis with IBS [irritable bowel syndrome] and gastro reflux disease and with severe weight loss”. She surfaced before the public eye from time to time, such as in yoga camps. In September 2017, Amit Shah, then BJP national president, appeared as a star defense witness in her defence. He testified that he saw Kodnani in the Gujarat Assembly and at the Sola Civil Hospital on the day of the riots, contradicting the SIT’s claim that she was at the crime scene during those hours.

Finally, on April 20, 2018 a division bench of the Gujarat High Court overturned her conviction and acquitted her of all charges. It cited to justify its decision “contradictions” in witness testimonies. It noted that none of the 11 key witnesses named her when the police first registered the case in 2002; her name only appeared later when the SIT took over in 2008. The court gave her the “benefit of doubt”. However, although the same witnesses testified against Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi, the court upheld his conviction, although it reduced the quantum of his punishment.

Bilkis Bano’s appeal

The words of Bilkis Bano after the judgement in 2008 convicting the 11 men responsible for the mass rape and slaughter of her family, keep coming back to me:

“To fellow Indians, I appeal to all of you, at a time when we hear news everyday of people being attacked and killed because of their religion or community – please help affirm their faith in the secular values of our country and support their struggles for justice, equality, and dignity.”

Confronted by a nakedly partisan criminal justice system, I wonder what she would say to her fellow citizens today.

I am grateful for the research support of Sumaiya Fatima.

An engineer associated with the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority has been suspended after a part of an under-construction viaduct in Mumbai’s Mulund area collapsed, leaving one dead and three injured, The Hindu reported on Sunday.

Satyajit Salve, an executive engineer of the Mumbai Metro Line 4 project, was suspended on the orders of Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.

“The officials who compromise public safety will not be spared,” Shinde was quoted by the newspaper as saying. He also announced that the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority would bear the medical expenses of the injured.

The incident occurred on Saturday at about 12.20 pm near the Mulund fire station on the Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg.

Videos posted on social media showed a large concrete block, which appeared to be part of the parapet segment of the viaduct, falling on an auto rickshaw and a car.

The person who died was identified as Ramdhani Yadav, 46. He was sitting in the back of the auto rickshaw.

Rajkumar Indrajeet Yadav, one of those injured, is in a critical condition in intensive care, while Mahendra Pratap Yadav and Deepa Ruhiya are reported to be stable.

A first information report has been registered under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to culpable homicide and criminal acts with common intent against managers, engineers, a supervisor and a worker associated with the project, The Hindu reported.

Five persons have been arrested in connection with the collapse so far.

The metro development authority has formed a high-level inquiry to investigate the collapse, NDTV reported.

Umar Khalid was uncharacteristically laconic in his response to questions about his life in prison.

It has been more than five years since the former student-activist from the Jawaharlal Nehru University was arrested and imprisoned for his alleged involvement in the 2020 Delhi riots. The trial is yet to begin.

In January, the Supreme Court denied Khalid bail. Days later, Scroll interviewed him through one of his JNU friends who regularly visits him in Tihar Jail.

Khalid, 38, said his first couple of years “away from social media” in Tihar were “good”. Over time, the detachment with which he approached the experience gave way to “restlessness”. And as his bail pleas snailed through the corridors of Indian courts, that restive feeling “metamorphosed to resignation”.

Today, he feels “disconnected” from reality. “Do I even know the world any more?” he asked.

A national storm erupted in February 2016 when the Modi government ordered a police crackdown against students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University for slogans raised at a campus event. Three students were arrested on charges of sedition, sparking a debate on nationalism and democratic freedoms.

Ten years later, we revisit the legacy of that moment by tracing the trajectories of four student-activists – the choices they made, the outcomes that followed, and what that reveals about political life in India.

Before his prolonged incarceration, Khalid used to believe that he knew the world quite well. In fact, in 2016, this confidence landed him in trouble.

Television crews had swarmed JNU the day after Khalid and nine others organised a controversial event on campus that February. At that time, most students were amused by the media frenzy over a gathering that they saw as ordinary. Some of them even engaged the visiting journalists in all earnest.

That day, Khalid volunteered for what, in hindsight, turned out to be risky assignments – he went on the primetime shows of establishment-friendly television channels where anchors like Arnab Goswami of Times Now shouted him down.

“That is when he realised that we were like frogs in a well,” said Apeksha Priyadarshini, his friend from JNU. “He understood that there were many people out there who did not wish to listen to him and that the world was nothing like the campus.”

Other television channels went one step further, singling out Khalid for his Muslim identity and labelling him a terrorist sympathiser.

He was researching his PhD at the time of his arrest. His doctoral thesis had nothing to do with the social milieu he came from, and instead focused on how the historical experience of colonialism disrupted the lives of Adivasis in Jharkhand.

Coming into his own

Born in 1987, Khalid grew up in Delhi and is the eldest of six siblings. His middle-class parents made sure to provide him and his sisters the best education that they could.

His father was steeped in Muslim politics, but as early as 2009, Khalid told the makers of a student documentary that he was “hardly a Muslim”. He was a student of history at Delhi University’s Kirori Mal College then.

Later, as a postgraduate student in JNU, he immersed himself in Left politics and began professing atheism. He first became a member of the Democratic Students’ Union, a hard Left campus outfit that was severely critical of India’s mainstream communist parties.

But he fell out with the organisation over disagreements with its approach to gender justice, and along with a few others, floated the Bhagat Singh Ambedkar Students Organisation in 2016. The group aspired to integrate the “struggle against caste system and patriarchy” within the Left’s class politics.

Political sparring, however, never came in the way of making friends. On campus, Khalid was known for his affability.

A professor who met him while he was still writing his PhD recounted an anecdote about his love for conversation. She knew him to be a charismatic speaker but it was when she debated a range of social issues with him one-on-one in her home that she discovered his keenness to listen, his openness to being contradicted, and also his verbosity.

“Hours into the chat, he got up to step out for a smoke, saying he would be back shortly,” the professor recalled. “I told him, ‘Don’t come back. It is quite late.’ But he wanted to keep talking.”

A question of faith

Beneath the geniality, though, Khalid was experiencing inner turmoil. As Hindutva assertion pushed Muslims into a corner, he started thinking deeply about faith-based discrimination.

His artist friend Shuddhabrata Sengupta, who first met him at a 2012 convention in Delhi on the rights of political prisoners, said the lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq in 2015 triggered the churn.

Around that time, the two had a long conversation about the philosopher Hannah Arendt exhorting those oppressed as Jews to respond as Jews. The young scholar was moved by the text, and even wanted to set up a reading circle to explore the potential for justice and freedom “within an Islamic framework”.

During the 2016 sedition controversy, television channels had labelled Khalid a “terrorist”. While he had publicly taken them on, the impact lingered – he could no longer take the metro or go anywhere alone because of the fear of an attack, said one of his friends.

These fears came true in August 2018, when two men from Haryana made an unsuccessful attempt on his life. At that time, he had just completed his PhD and was busy with United Against Hate, the campaign that he had co-founded with the intention of tackling hate crimes.

“After the assassination attempt, he would always keep looking over his shoulder,” his friend Anirban Bhattacharya recalled. “If anybody stared at him for more than three seconds, he would get uncomfortable.”

The incident prompted Khalid’s return to Jamia Nagar, the predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in southeast Delhi where he had grown up. His friend Nabiya Khan, who also lived in the area then, said she saw him develop deeper roots within the community as he organised medical camps and took part in other local initiatives in those months.

“The major change I noticed in him was that he went from theory to practice,” she said. “His engagement deepened and he became more grounded in the community. His days and nights were spent among the people of Jamia Nagar.”

They can't scare us into silence, a lesson I learnt from Gauri Lankesh!

(Detailed response in the morning). pic.twitter.com/MJbtPK5El4

— Umar Khalid (@UmarKhalidJNU) August 13, 2018

A reluctant leader

In December 2019, Parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, which for the first time introduced a religious criteria for Indian citizenship.

Khalid emerged as one of the most vocal critics of the new law, which many saw as an instrument of discrimination against Muslims. For months, he criss-crossed the length and breadth of the country as protesters, largely Muslim, sought him out for his speech-making.

An activist who shared the dais with him at one of the many protests against CAA in those days recalled feeling uneasy at Khalid being introduced as “the new leader of Indian Muslims”. Khalid, to this activist’s great surprise, did not object to the use of this descriptor.

Was the newfound popularity making him embrace identity politics? His friend, journalist Kaushik Raj, said Khalid had little time to think about such questions then. He was clear that the opposition to CAA must be broad-based and not merely driven by identity.

“If you are against attacks on the Constitution, you can speak up against it as a Muslim, a Hindu, a Sikh or even an atheist,” Raj recalled Khalid once telling him.

In public, too, Khalid stressed on the “socio-economic demands” of the Muslim community more than its religious grievances, drawing on his long-held leftist frameworks. Privately, though, he was growing tired of repeating himself at one anti-CAA protest after another.

“I don’t want to do all this,” Khalid said to a friend who used to accompany him on these trips then and requested not to be identified. The two were headed to a protest in Kerala, but got stuck in Bengaluru airport because of a flight delay. Khalid, his friend recollected, had been silently ruminating for a long time before he spoke.

“I just want to go to a village in Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh and be there with people in greater need,” he said to his friend.

Arrest and incarceration

Eventually, it was a speech he made at an anti-CAA protest in Amravati, Maharashtra, that led to his arrest in the Delhi riots conspiracy case in September 2020.

In the speech, Khalid had invoked Mahatma Gandhi and called for non-violent protests to coincide with the upcoming visit of the United States President Donald Trump in February that year. But Delhi Police blamed the violence that erupted during Trump’s visit on Khalid and other activists, holding up the Amaravati speech as evidence of a “premeditated” conspiracy.

A professor who was with Khalid on the day he was called in for questioning by the Delhi Police, and later arrested, was struck by how composed he was: “He was not stressed at all.”

His friends insist that he has not changed much in the five years and five months that have lapsed since then. Sometimes, his spirits drop, especially after he returns to jail after having spent a few days outside on interim bail. But he somehow manages to pull himself out of these low phases, a close friend said.

He also continues to read voraciously and write with more or less the same academic rigour.

One source of frustration that Khalid has expressed in recent meetings with close friends is “the language” of those vowing support for him. As one friend put it, he is tired of being “pigeonholed” as an atheist while he and other political prisoners are “persecuted” on the basis of their faith.

Another friend of over 12 years recalled talking to Khalid about the “transformation” in how he sees himself when he was out on interim bail last December.

“A communist does not believe in these identities, but can you really escape them?” she asked. “Many elite Muslims like Javed Akhtar are uncomfortable with their identity. The other trap is getting caught up in identity politics.”

Khalid, she said, “has been dealing with this question”.

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