Authorities said that a major river that is overflowing close to the capital of India has reached its highest level ever, forcing widespread evacuations and destabilising water supplies while northern regions report an increase in fatalities from severe flooding.
According to the Central Water Commission, the Yamuna River, a tributary of the powerful Ganges River, crossed the “high flood level” threshold on Wednesday for the first time in 45 years.
The Yamuna reached 208.57 metres (approximately 684 feet) on Thursday, the highest level ever, according to officials. The Yamuna runs through multiple states and travels nearly 855 miles (1,376 km) south from the Himalayas.
Public Works Department Minister Atishi Marlena said about 30,000 people were evacuated along the river banks and urged residents to stay with relatives or seek shelter at relief camps.
“We are monitoring the water levels but right now there is so much water that we cannot stop it. Our focus right now is on evacuating,” she said Thursday, calling the situation “unprecedented.”
Complicating matters, Haryana state neighboring Delhi released water from a barrage – which could cause the Yamuna water levels to rise further, Marlena added.
India’s National Disaster Response Force told CNN on Thursday it had 12 teams working to help evacuate residents in affected areas.
The river overflowing has also led to school and office closures, along with likely water shortages, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said.
Speaking to reporters Thursday, he said schools in affected areas have been ordered shut through Sunday, and non-essential public and private employees have been asked to work from home.
The overflowing has also impacted three water treatment plants in Delhi, Kejriwal said, warning that people will likely have to ration water supplies for several days due to shortages.
Transport has also been impacted, with some roads closed due to waterlogging, and heavy goods vehicles restricted from entering flood-affected areas.
Delhi metro trains, which serve millions of passengers each day, must travel at slower speeds when crossing bridges over the river, with the Yamuna metro station closed.
India is in the midst of monsoon season, which can last from April to September.
A week of heavy rains in the north of the country has caused flash floods, landslides, evacuations and sparked rescue efforts across much of the region. The death toll has climbed to at least 67 people, according to authorities.
The mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh has been hardest hit so far with at least 31 deaths, its chief minister said Tuesday.
More than 50,000 tourists were evacuated from Himachal Pradesh within 48 hours, according to the state’s Information Department – including in towns popular with travelers for their Himalayan backdrops and scenic forests.
In neighboring Uttarakhand state, three people drowned on Wednesday after a car lost control and fell into a river in Khoh River Pauri district, according to CNN affiliate CNN-News 18.
Meanwhile 11 people have died in Punjab state, 12 in Uttar Pradesh, and 10 in Haryana, CNN News-18 reported, citing officials.
With the launch of its Chandrayaan-3 mission on Friday, India is attempting to become just the fourth nation to carry out a controlled landing on the moon.
At 2:30 p.m. local time (5 a.m. ET), Chandrayaan, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, is anticipated to launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in southern Andhra Pradesh state.
India is attempting a soft landing for the second time after Chandrayaan-2, its last attempt, failed in 2019. Chandrayaan-1, its first lunar probe, orbited the moon before being purposefully crash-landed onto the lunar surface in 2008.
Developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Chandrayaan-3 is comprised of a lander, propulsion module and rover. Its aim is to safely land on the lunar surface, collect data and conduct a series of scientific experiments to learn more about the moon’s composition.
Only three other countries have achieved the complicated feat of soft-landing a spacecraft on the moon’s surface – the United States, Russia and China.
Indian engineers have been working on the launch for years. They are aiming to land Chandrayaan-3 near the challenging terrain of the moon’s unexplored South Pole.
India’s maiden lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, discovered water molecules on the moon’s surface. Eleven years later, the Chandrayaan-2 successfully entered lunar orbit but its rover crash-landed on the moon’s surface. It too was supposed to explore the moon’s South Pole.
At the time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the engineers behind the mission despite the failure, promising to keep working on India’s space program and ambitions.
Just before Friday’s launch, Modi said the day “will always be etched in golden letters as far as India’s space sector is concerned.”
“This remarkable mission will carry the hopes and dreams of our nation,” he said in a Twitter post.
India has since spent about $75 million on its Chandrayaan-3 mission.
Modi said the rocket will cover more than 300,000 kilometers (186,411 miles) and reach the moon in the “coming weeks.”
India’s space program dates back more than six decades, to when it was a newly independent republic and a deeply poor country reeling from a bloody partition.
When it launched its first rocket into space in 1963, the country was no match for the ambitions of the US and the former Soviet Union, which were way ahead in the space race.
Now, India is the world’s most populous nation and its fifth largest economy. It boasts a burgeoning young population and is home to a growing hub of innovation and technology.
And India’s space ambitions have been playing catch up under Modi.
For the leader, who swept to power in 2014 on a ticket of nationalism and future greatness, India’s space program is a symbol of the country’s rising prominence on the global stage.
In 2014, India became the first Asian nation to reach Mars, when it put the Mangalyaan probe into orbit around the Red Planet, for $74 million – less than the $100 million Hollywood spent making space thriller “Gravity.”
Three years later, India launched a record 104 satellites in one mission.
In 2019, Modi announced in a rare televised address that India had shot down one of its own satellites, in what it claimed was an anti-satellite test, making it one of only four countries to do so.
That same year ISRO’s former chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan said India was planning to set up an independent space station by 2030. Currently, the only space stations available for expedition crews are the International Space Station (a joint project between several countries) and China’s Tiangong Space Station.
The rapid development and innovation has made space tech one of India’s hottest sectors for investors – and world leaders appear to have taken notice.
Last month, when Modi met US President Joe Biden in Washington on a state visit, the White House said both leaders sought more collaboration in the space economy.
And India’s space ambitions do not stop at the moon or Mars. ISRO has also proposed sending an orbiter to Venus.
Ten men in India have been sentenced to 10 years in prison by a court for the brutal killing of Tabrez Ansari, a 24-year-old Muslim man.
The incident occurred four years ago in the state of Jharkhand when Ansari was accused of stealing a motorcycle. A viral video showed Ansari being forced to chant praises to Hindu gods while pleading for his life, sparking widespread outrage in the country.
Despite his injuries, Ansari’s family alleged that the police denied him medical treatment. However, the state police denied any wrongdoing in the matter.
The disturbing video footage from the night of June 19, 2019, depicted a terrified Ansari tied to an electricity pole, being assaulted by a mob, and blood and tears streaming down his face.
The recent court ruling has resulted in the conviction of the ten men involved in the attack, sentencing them to a 10-year jail term.
Four years ago in the eastern state of Jharkhand, India, 24-year-old Tabrez Ansari was brutally beaten to death by a group of men who accused him of stealing a motorcycle.
Recently, a court in India sentenced 10 men involved in the attack to 10-year jail terms. The incident had sparked massive outrage across the country after a video went viral showing Ansari being forced to chant praises to Hindu gods while pleading for his life.
The heart-wrenching video footage from the night of 19th June 2019 depicted a terrified Ansari tied to an electricity pole, enduring the merciless assault by the mob.
Blood and tears streamed down his face as he suffered inhumanity at the hands of his attackers. Adding to the tragedy, Ansari’s family alleged that the police had denied him proper medical treatment despite his severe injuries, while the state police maintained their denial of any wrongdoing.
The case had received significant attention and raised concerns about communal tensions and the need for better protection of minority communities in India.
The court’s verdict, though a step towards justice, highlights the importance of addressing issues related to religious and communal violence and ensuring that all citizens are treated equally under the law.
Australia’s premier off-spinner, Nathan Lyon, has been ruled out of the remaining Ashes series against England due to a calf injury sustained during the second Test at Lord’s.
With 496 Test wickets to his name, Lyon’s absence is a significant blow for the Australian team. Additionally, batter Matthew Renshaw has also been omitted from the squad for the remaining Tests.
Australia lead the series 2-0 having won by 43 runs at Lord’s and by two wickets in the first Test at Edgbaston.
Spinner Todd Murphy, who took 14 wickets on a tour of India earlier this year, could replace Lyon for the third Test, which starts at Headingley on Thursday.
“As you saw [on Sunday], at certain times, we had to do it differently without Nathan Lyon down the other end, which we’ve been so used to,” said Australia coach Andrew McDonald.
“At times it looked a little bit chaotic so we do like to have that spin option.”Murphy, 22, had only played seven first-class matches before his Test debut against India in February.”His stock ball is good enough in international cricket,” said Lyon.
“We have seen that in India in arguably the hardest place to bowl spin.”It will be a different challenge with the England batters.
“If they do come at him, it provides Todd with a decent challenge. But a chance to leave his footmarks here in England. It is a big Ashes series, he is excited by the opportunity.”
In the first Test at Edgbaston, Nathan Lyon showcased his bowling prowess by claiming eight wickets, contributing to Australia’s victory.
During the second Test at Lord’s, Lyon reached a milestone in his career by taking his 496th Test wicket, dismissing opener Zak Crawley.
Unfortunately, Lyon’s remarkable run came to an abrupt halt on day two of the second Test when he suffered an injury while fielding.
Despite his injury, Lyon displayed determination and courage by coming out to bat on day four, contributing four runs in a partnership of 15 with Mitchell Starc.
As temperatures spike in the north and east of the nation, authorities in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh are looking into the deaths of at least 68 persons that occurred between Thursday and Sunday in the Ballia region.
The country’s meteorological bureau issued a warning about potential heat-related deaths before the recent spike in fatalities.
This week, according to AFP, temperatures in northern and eastern India reached 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit). In the summer months of May and June, the nation frequently experiences heatwaves, and climate change has increased the likelihood of a heatwave that sets new records.
But local officials have been unable to agree on the cause behind the spike of deaths, as critics accuse the government of not doing enough to prevent the deaths.
A local health official acknowledged heat may have been a factor in the deaths of 25 people on June 16. “In this temperature, most number of patients are victims of heatstroke, and it won’t take long before people are affected by heatstroke,” Dr. Diwakar Singh said.
According to the BBC, he went on to say: “Most of the patients were above 60 and had pre-existing ailments. These were exacerbated by the heat and they were brought to the hospital in serious condition. They died despite being given adequate treatment and medicines.”
But after he spoke to the media, Singh, Ballia district’s chief health official, was transferred overnight to another district in the province overnight, for “‘giving a careless statement on deaths caused by heatwave without having proper information,’” Indian Express reported.
Later, the Chief Medical Officer of Ballia, Dr. Jayant Kumar, said the spike in deaths was due to “various other ailments,” including old age.
“There is a team that has come to investigate the cause of death, a two-member committee comprising of health directors who are meeting the patients, they have taken water, urine, and blood samples for investigation. Once we get the report, then the situation will be clear to us,” Kumar said.
Another health director, Dr. N Tiwari investigating the deaths of patients admitted to the Ballia district hospital, said, “a detailed inspection has been done of the hospital, it is true that the heat is very high, patients who are admitted here are also suffering from the heat, however there have been arrangements that have been made to ease the situation inside the hospital.”
Akhilesh Yadav, an opposition political party leader and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, has criticized the government for the number of deaths that have taken place in the state.
“So many people across the state have lost lives because of the carelessness of the state government,” he told the press. “They should have warned the people about the heatwave. Not a single district hospital has been built in the last six years. Those who have lost their lives are poor farmers because they did not receive food, medicines and treatment on time.”
India’s Health Minister Dr. Mansukh Mandaviya said the government is taking steps to address the heat wave and the surge in deaths, and officials would “hold discussions with the states which are continuing or likely to continue with heat wave so that appropriate decisions regarding heat stroke can be taken.”
India is among the countries expected to be worst affected by the impacts of the climate crisis, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In recent years, both the federal and state governments have implemented a number of measures to mitigate the effects of heatwaves, including shutting down schools and issuing health advisories for the public.
A group of pupils had to down one rope in order to escape a burning structure.
On 15 June, an electricity metre caught fire and caused a massive fire to spread to the Gyana building in Delhi, India.
The pupils may be seen on video footage lowering themselves one at a time from a window on a higher floor while dense smoke is seen billowing out behind them.
They managed to use air conditioner units installed on other floors to assist them.
The students could be seen escaping as smoke billowed out of the windows
All were rescued from the building and no one was injured, according to the fire report.
Delhi fire services director Atul Garg said: ‘We received info about a fire in a building.
‘Later we came to know that it is a coaching centre and some children are trapped in it.
‘We sent a total of 11 fire tenders to the spot. The fire has been brought under control.’
In a joint operation earlier this week in the Arabian Sea, India’s two aircraft carriers led their battle groups, displaying what the Indian Navy says its “formidable maritime capabilities” and capacity to project power throughout the Indian Ocean and beyond.
According to analysts, it’s a significant achievement that has just recently been accomplished by the United States Navy.
The Indian Navy is one of the few in the world to operate more than one aircraft carrier, according to Nick Childs, senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). “This is not a small achievement,” he added.
The two aircraft carriers, INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant, led the exercise with more than 35 aircraft and an array of surface ships and submarines, according to a press release from the Indian Navy.
“The successful demonstration of two-carrier battle group operations serves as a powerful testament to the pivotal role of sea-based air power in maintaining maritime superiority,” the release said.
India became capable of dual-carrier operations when the $3 billion Vikrant, India’s first domestically built carrier, was commissioned last September, joining Vikramaditya, which was bought from Russia and went into service in 2013.
Upon Vikrant’s commissioning last year, India joined only the United Kingdom and China in commissioning a domestically built aircraft carrier in the previous three years.
But while both China and the UK have more than one aircraft carrier in their modern fleets, neither has yet to perform dual-carrier operations with them, analysts said.
Collin Koh, research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said India’s naval history may put it ahead of China, whose People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is the world’s largest, in the current operating environment for aircraft carriers.
“The Indian Navy has had decades-long experience and expertise in aircraft carrier ops and this is probably the key advantage it possesses over the PLA Navy, its key rival in this field, despite the latter’s relative advance in its indigenous aircraft carrier program,” Koh said.
China has two aircraft carriers in service, the Soviet-built Liaoning and the domestically built Shandong, while a third carrier, the Fujian, has been launched but not commissioned.
Hawaii-based analyst Carl Schuster, a former US Navy captain, said India’s dual-carrier operations this week show “the rejuvenation of the Indian Navy.”
India commissioned its first aircraft carrier in 1961 and added a second in 1987. It has operated two aircraft carriers on two previous occasions, between 1987 and 1997, and between 2013 and 2017.
“It should be remembered that the Indian Navy has always been a highly trained, tightly disciplined and very proficient force,” Schuster said.
The Indian Navy press release called the carriers “floating sovereign airfields,” adding that “they provide our friends with an assurance that the Indian Navy is capable and ready to support our ‘collective’ security needs in the region.”
New Delhi’s forces have been stepping up cooperation with other navies in the Indo-Pacific, including those in the informal Quad partnership – the United States, Japan and Australia – in the annual Malabar naval exercises.
“India’s partnerships and collaborative exercises with other navies have broadened the navy’s operational knowledge and open ocean experiences,” Schuster said.
What the Indian Navy can learn about dual-carrier operations from the United States could be substantial. The US Navy operates the world’s largest carrier fleet – 11 warships – and just last week had two of those, the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan, operating together in the Philippine Sea.
The US Navy sees China as a “pacing threat” in the Indo-Pacific, and India’s naval operations look toward China too, Schuster said.
“China’s aggression along the (shared Himalayan) border and expanding operations and presence in the Indian Ocean have become India’s most serious security concern. The naval expansion and modernization is intended to address that concern,” Schuster said.
But even with the advancements demonstrated by the dual-carrier operation, India’s carrier program still has question marks, said Childs from IISS.
“While an impressive-looking display, there may be some question over what this really amounts to as yet in terms of actual operational capability,” he said, noting that images from the Indian operation showed relatively few fighter aircraft on the decks of the Vikramaditya and Vikrant.
“This may indicate limited aircraft availability, or that the ships’ capacities are somewhat constrained at the moment. It would certainly suggest that the Indian Navy could do with more carrier aircraft,” Childs said.
A severe cyclone named Biparjoy, meaning “disaster” in Bengali, is approaching India and Pakistan, prompting the evacuation of over 150,000 people in its path.
The cyclone poses a significant threat to homes and crops as it is expected to make landfall in Gujarat, India’s western state, on Thursday evening local time.
Preliminary reports indicate heavy rainfall, rough seas, and high tides along the coastal regions of Gujarat. Cyclone Biparjoy is projected to hit the area between the Jakhau port, situated between Mandvi in Gujarat and Keti Bandar in Pakistan’s Sindh province, sometime between 16:00 and 20:00 local time.
Pakistan’s disaster management agency has issued warnings of storm surges reaching heights of 3-4 meters (10-13 feet) along the coastline from Karachi to Gujarat.
Meanwhile, Alok Pandey, Gujarat’s Relief Commissioner, highlighted that although the cyclone’s speed has decreased, its wind speeds are still expected to be dangerously high at around 110-120 km/h (68-75 mph) during landfall.
India’s meteorological department has cautioned that the cyclone will cause significant damage to roads, thatched houses, and vital infrastructure such as electricity towers and trees along Gujarat’s coast.
Efforts are underway to ensure the safety of residents in the affected areas, with evacuation procedures and emergency measures being implemented. The authorities are closely monitoring the situation and providing updates to the public as the cyclone approaches.
The state’s health minister, Rushikesh Patel, asked people to stay where they were and avoid travelling. “Our aim is to ensure zero casualties,” he said.
At least seven deaths were reported amid heavy rains in India this week.
The victims included two children crushed by a collapsing wall, and a woman hit by a falling tree while riding a motorbike, AFP news agency reported.
In Pakistan, the storm is expected to strike the coast of Sindh province. Authorities have already evacuated 81,000 people from the south-eastern coast and set up 75 relief camps at schools.
Pakistan’s climate change minister Sherry Rehman said that Karachi, the province’s largest city with a population of more than 20 million, was not under immediate threat but emergency measures were being taken.
Meteorologists warned that high tides could inundate low-lying areas along the coasts.
Image caption,More than 150,000 people in India and Pakistan have been evacuated to shelters and temporary camps
Several parts of coastal Gujarat have witnessed heavy rains and high-speed winds since Wednesday.
On Thursday morning, strong winds and rough sea conditions were reported in Mandvi.
The Jakhau Port, usually bustling with activity, wore a deserted look because the entire village near the shoreline has been relocated.
Gujarat state officials said 67,000 people had been evacuated from coastal areas.
Image caption,The cyclone is expected to make landfall on Thursday evening local time
Several train services have been suspended in Gujarat, while the ports of Kandla and Mundra – two of India’s largest – have stopped operations, authorities said.
Fishing has stopped along the Gujarat coast, while fishermen in Pakistan’s coastal region have also been warned to stay off the water.
Six national disaster relief teams have been deployed in key areas in the Kutch region of Gujarat for relief work. They will focus on ensuring that essential services remain unaffected or at least restored soon, depending on the cyclone’s intensity.
The India Meteorological Department expects Biparjoy to “fall in intensity” after crossing.
Cyclones, also known as hurricanes in the North Atlantic and typhoons in the Northwest Pacific, are a regular and deadly phenomenon in the Indian Ocean. Rising surface temperatures across the Arabian Sea in recent years due to climate change have made the surrounding regions even more vulnerable to devastating storms.
Cyclone Tauktae in May 2021 was the last severe cyclone that struck in the same region. It killed 174 people.
The evacuations for Biparjoy have brought back grim memories from 25 years ago when another cyclone hit the Gujarat coast, leaving a trail of death and destruction. Official figures put the death toll at around 4,000 but unofficially, locals say the number is much higher.
“We have seen cyclones in the past, but this time it looks very bad,” says 40-year old Abbas Yakub, a fisherman sheltering at a primary school in Mandvi. He is among 150 people at the temporary shelter.
“Our home is exactly at the coast, waves already touched our house yesterday morning. We don’t know what we will go back to,” he says.
A recently published study in Lancet has revealed that 101 million individuals in India, which accounts for 11.4% of the country’s population, are currently living with diabetes.
The study, commissioned by the health ministry, also highlighted that an additional 136 million people, or 15.3% of the population, were living with pre-diabetes.
The most prevalent type of diabetes is Type 2, where individuals experience elevated blood sugar levels due to insufficient insulin production or an inadequate response to the hormone.
The latest study, published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, is considered to be the first to comprehensively cover every state to assess the country’s burden of non-communicable diseases.
Researchers said they found that the prevalence of diabetes in India’s population was much higher than previously estimated. The WHO had estimated 77 million people suffering from diabetes, and nearly 25 million were pre-diabetics, at a higher risk of developing diabetes in near future.
“It is a ticking time bomb,” Dr RM Anjana, lead author of the study and managing director at Dr Mohan’s Diabetes Specialities Centre, told The Indian Express newspaper.
“If you have pre-diabetes, conversion to diabetes is very, very fast in our population; more than 60% of people with pre-diabetes end up converting to diabetes in the next five years,” she said.
Image caption,Indians suffering from diabetes at a a walk to promote awareness about the condition in Bangalore city
The decade-long study was conducted by the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and involved 113,000 participants over the age of 20 from every state in India.
Data collected in 2008 was extrapolated for 2021 using demographics in the latest National Family Health Survey, the most comprehensive household survey of health and social indicators by the government.
The highest prevalence of diabetes was observed in Goa (26.4%), Puducherry (26.3%) and Kerala (25.5%).
The study warned of a sharp rise in diabetes in states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Arunachal Pradesh where the prevalence was lower.
Also diabetes was more frequent in urban than rural areas, the study found.
“Changing lifestyles, improved standards of living, migration to cities, erratic working hours, sedentary habits, stress, pollution, change in food habits and easy availability of fast food are some of the reasons why diabetes is rising in India,” Rahul Baxi, a consultant diabetologist at Bombay Hospital, told the BBC.
Dr Baxi said that diabetes was “no more a disease of the affluent or of those in the cities”.
“I see a good number of patients travelling from smaller towns. The prevalence of pre-diabetes is even higher and many people are undiagnosed for a long time.”
Image caption,A 19-year-old resident of Delhi gets his blood sugar test done at a clinic
Dr Baxi said he has been seeing a lot of younger patients with diabetes over the last few years.
“I have seen some cases of children of my patients who just checked their glucose levels at home because their parents were checking and they found the levels high!,” he said.
Diabetes affects about one in 11 adults worldwide and increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, blindness, kidney failure and limb amputation.
It is normally split into type 1 and type 2.
Type 1 diabetes is a disease of the immune system. It errantly attacks the body’s insulin factories (beta-cells) so there is not enough of the hormone to control blood sugar levels.
Type 2 diabetes is largely seen as a disease of poor lifestyle as body fat can affect the way the insulin works.
As others walk by, a teenage girl is fatally stabbed and beaten.
Similar destiny befalls an even younger girl, who was supposedly targeted by her own father because she and her mother decided to spend the night on the patio.
In India last month, these two horrible incidents occurred ten days apart, yet eminent Supreme Court counsel Jayna Kothari noted that violence against women has been rising for the past ten years.
“For the last 10 years we’ve been seeing these gruesome murders and violent incidents. I don’t think anything has been done much,” said Kothari, who is known for her work on cases related to gender and sexuality.
That decade spans the years since “Nirbhaya,” a 23-year-old student, died after being gang-raped on a Delhi bus in 2012. Advocates had hoped the shocking murder case would represent a watershed moment in India’s approach to violence against women.
But while outrage in the more immediate aftermath of the attack did lead to stronger rape laws, Kothari and many others say in reality little has changed.
“The crimes are continuing but there’s no visible action taken,” Kothari said.
In fact, as others like Swati Maliwal, chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women, point out, such crimes are becoming more common.
“The intensity of the crime, the frequency of the crime and the brutality of the crimes have gone up,” she said.
The most recent incidents are merely the latest in a long line of violent crimes that have triggered anger about whether the government is doing enough to protect women and punish attackers.
According to India’s National Crime Records Bureau, crimes against women rose 87% over 10 years between 2011 and 2021 – with most cases in the latter year relating to alleged “cruelty by husband or his relatives” and assault.
CNN asked various arms of the Indian government whether there are any plans or strategies to crack down on violence against women, but has not received a response.
Kothari, the lawyer, believes authorities have become too complacent since Nirbhaya’s fatal assault. Since the reforms that followed the case – which included broadening the definition of rape, raising the minimum punishment for the offense to seven years in jail and increasing the age of consent from 16 to 18 – she says there’s been “a sense with the courts, police, the government, that now everything is being done.”
But recent events show otherwise, she argues. Kothari points to the incident in Gujarat’s Surat district on May 19, in which a father allegedly attacked his wife and daughter with a knife because they wanted to sleep on the terrace of their house, rather than inside, as evidence that domestic violence remains “a pervasive issue, even today.”
“It hasn’t been addressed,” Kothari said. “In India, still, people don’t want to talk about domestic violence.”
She says the attack in Delhi, where people passed by as a girl was repeatedly stabbed by her male attacker, is especially worrying. She’s concerned that it suggests a societal apathy towards violence against women and girls, or worse, acceptance.
“I think why the recent case is so shocking is it happened so blatantly in a public place,” Kothari said. “It’s almost as if socially, people don’t see anything wrong. What has our society turned to that a young man can feel like he can do this, and people around are also OK with this?”
In the absence of action, Kothari and other advocates warn that young girls and women will grow up believing such violence is to be expected.
“These crimes make them feel that it’s not safe for them to be in relationships, to exercise their autonomy,” she said. “What are we doing to protect the rights of young girls? Their right to be safe, their right to be free, and their right to be unafraid that these incidents are not going to happen.”
Yogita Bhayana, founder of People Against Rapes in India, said it was “very unfortunate” that Indians had “learned to live with this kind of situation in our country.”
Advocates say many cases go unreported due in part to a culture of victim shaming in what remains a highly patriarchal society and a lack of confidence in the police.
“The problem is vast. When we talk about gender violence, it’s much bigger than what we think,” Bhayana said.
Maliwal,chair of the Delhi Commission for Women, expressed a similar sentiment.
“Of course there is patriarchy, of course there is misogyny, and it is widespread,” she said. “But what is the difference here is our politicians are not willing to commit and walk the talk. So they will blame the people when actually it is not the people but the systems that need to be blamed.”
Another source of frustration is how slowly the wheels of justice can move in India.
Maliwal cited a case involving the rape of an 8-month-old girl in 2018 and the fact it was still working its way through the courts as reflecting the depth of the problem.
“How is it that an 8-month-old baby gets raped in 2018 and her case has not finished?” she asked.
Some campaigners say misogyny runs so deep in India’s patriarchal society that the system fails all women, regardless of their status.
Maliwal pointed to recent protests by high-profile female wrestlers, who are demanding an inquiry into claims of sexual harassment by the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) President Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who denies all allegations.
Following a weeks-long sit-in, police finally registered a case in April, four months after the initial complaint was filed. The wrestlers, including some well-known Olympians, continued protesting on the streets until last month when some were dragged away and detained by police who said they had failed to follow officers’ orders.
Maliwal suggested their arrest further eroded trust in the police and justice system.
“Tomorrow, if a girl faces sexual harassment in the workplace, how will she be able to muster the courage to report the matter because she’s already seen what happens when somebody reports the case?” she asked.
“When such big stars of the country … are not given justice, what hope is there for anyone?”
Manto Kumar was on a train called Coromandel Express with six of his friends. Suddenly, the train shook very hard like an earthquake.
All of a sudden, something hit us. The restaurant worker, who is 32 years old, spoke with CNN from a hospital in Odisha state, India. They said that some coaches flipped over to the other side.
I stood up and covered my head that was bleeding with my shirt. Next, I searched for my pals. Everyone was yelling “help us. help us”
One of Kumar’s friends lost both his legs in the crash and was rushed to hospital. He did not survive his injuries.
Their story is just one of hundreds unfolding across the country as India deals with one of the worst train crashes it has ever seen.
At least 275 people were killed and more than 1,000 others injured after the Coromandel Express slammed into a parked freight train, scattering upturned passenger cars that were then struck by a Howrah Express train traveling at high speed in the opposite direction.
Three days later, families are still trying to locate their loved ones, piles of dead bodies are waiting to be identified and hospitals are laboring to treat an overwhelming number of injured passengers.
Morgues in the city of Balasore had earlier reached full capacity, prompting officials to place some of the bodies in school corridors and a business park for families to identify.
For families that have traveled to the city, aching to locate their loved ones, the wait has been traumatic.
“I’ve been to all the hospitals and I’ve found out nothing,” Laluti Devi, who was looking for her 22-year-old son, told CNN, adding she will now travel nearly four hours south to the state’s capital Bhubaneswar, in a desperate attempt to see if he was transported to a morgue there.
Many of the dead are unclaimed, and local authorities are struggling to deal with the sheer scale of the disaster.
On Sunday, the state government released the photographs of more than 160 victims, many in horrific condition with gruesome injuries, in a bid to help families identify the bodies.
That leaves people facing the agonizing task of scrolling though picture after picture of mangled victims on the off chance they might come across their missing loved one.
A distraught father arrived at one of the identification sites after receiving a WhatsApp photo of his dead son.
“I was looking for my son since (Saturday),” he told local outlet Mojo TV, breaking down as he pointed to the photo. His 23-year-old boy, a laborer, was traveling to the city of Chennai for his job, like many others in the coach with him.
“This is my boy. This is my boy,” the father said through tears after identifying his son’s body.
Elsewhere, two women traveled to several sites, crying with anguish as they tried to locate their missing husbands.
India’s Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said it was his “goal” to ensure that family members could find their missing loved ones as soon as possible.
“Our responsibility is not over yet,” he said.
At local hospitals, doctors were working around the clock to treat injured patients.
In Balasore, a 15-year-old boy was among hundreds of survivors that arrived at the Government Medical College for treatment.
“People who were alive were shouting for help, praying to god,” he said, adding the train was so full, there was barely any room to stand. “Rescue teams were doing their best to save people. A lot of people were crying,” he said.
Laxminaranyan Dhal, a 52-year-old farmer who was traveling alone, said he clung onto the railing of the train for survival.
“I escaped through the broken windows,” he said. “When I got out, I saw a lot of people lying around – many were dead, some were moaning in pain.”
His spinal chord injury has left him in excruciating pain, making it difficult for the laborer to sit or even to stand.
“I cannot farm anymore, it hurts too much. Only after treatment I can start working,” he said.
According to senior railway officials, the Coromandel Express, a high-speed train that was traveling from Kolkata to Chennai, was diverted onto a loop line and slammed into a heavy goods train idled at Bahanaga Bazar railway station.
Its carriages derailed onto the opposite track, where they were hit by an oncoming high-speed train, the Howrah Express, which was traveling from Bangalore.
Many of the travelers were migrant workers, en route to Chennai, an urban metropolis in the southernmost Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where jobs are more freely available.
Survivors recalled seeing crowded coaches, packed with travelers, when it began flipping and rolling from the crash.
Anushuman Purohi, who was in first class and seated toward the end of the train, said he saw many “unimaginable” injuries.
“When we opened the door, that’s when I actually heard the wail of humanity, crying out in pain, crying out for water and crying out for help,” he said.
“There were a lot of people lying on the tracks, they were injured, there was blood everywhere, there were broken bones, and it was time for us to stop thinking about ourselves and help the injured… It was chaos, it was something I can really not describe… I saw a head without a body, I saw skulls crushed, I saw bodies completely crushed by the metal, it was horrifying.”
All Sunday, workers toiled in the scorching heat to clear the wreckage, as rail cars remained rolled in a ditch and passengers’ belongings were seen strewn across the ground. Suitcases, bags, shoes and personal items lined the tracks, alongside wrought metal and charred coaches.
By late evening, the first train resumed movement at the impacted section.
Vaishnaw, the railways minister, and others waved as the train rode down the tracks.
“All the teams did a great job. But there is a lot of pain in our mind and hearts,” Vaishnaw said. “We will find out the root cause (of this incident).”
Anger is growing in India, now the world’s most populous nation, renewing calls for authorities to confront safety issues in a railway system that transports more than 13 million passengers every day.
India’s extensive rail network is one of the largest in the world and built more than 160 years ago under British colonial rule. Today, it runs about 11,000 trains every day over 67,000 miles of tracks.
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who swept to power in 2014 on a promise of future greatness, upgrading the country’s transport system has been a key priority in his push to create a $5 trillion economy by 2025.
In the fiscal year that started in April, Modi’s government raised capital spending on airports, road and highway construction and other infrastructure projects to $122 billion, or 1.7% of India’s GDP. But years of neglect has left many tracks to deteriorate.
A report last year by India’s auditor general, an independent office, found the amount spent on track maintenance is falling. “Due to financial constraints, the progress in track renewals is constantly coming down over the last six years,” the report said.
Decaying infrastructure is often cited as a cause for traffic delays and numerous train accidents in India. And though government statistics show that accidents and derailments have declined in recent years, they are still tragically common.
More than 16,000 people were killed in nearly 18,000 railway accidents across the country in 2021, according to latest figures from the National Crime Records Bureau. Nearly 70% were due to falls from trains and collisions between trains and people on the track.
In 2005, at least 102 people died when a passenger train derailed in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh as it tried to cross tracks washed away by a flood. In 2011, scores were killed when a train jumped tracks in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
In another infamous incident in 2016, more than 140 people were killed in another derailment in Uttar Pradesh.
Railways Minister Vaishnaw said authorities have asked the Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s top investigation agency, to probe Friday’s crash.
Authorities have announced compensation of about $1,200 to families who have lost loved ones.
But as teams continue to investigate the cause, no amount of money could make up for the devastating loss of life.
As Kumar, whose friend died in the crash, recalled the horror of Friday’s accident, he reflected on how lucky he was to survive.
“I am blessed to have another chance at life,” he said.
India’s railway ministry has made a recommendation for the country’s premier detective agency to investigate the tragic crash that claimed the lives of 275 individuals.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced this decision, but specific details were not provided.
Initial investigations led by the railways have already commenced, with preliminary reports suggesting that a signal fault was the cause of the collision.
Occurring on Friday night, this three-train accident has been described as India’s most devastating rail disaster of the century.
Over 1,000 people sustained injuries and were transported to hospitals, while some families are still desperately searching for their missing loved ones.
The rationale behind the Railway Board, the ministry’s highest decision-making body, recommending a separate investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) remains unclear, especially when other inquiries have already been initiated.
The CBI specializes in probing high-profile criminal cases, encompassing serious financial fraud and homicide. According to Mr. Vaishnaw, the railway minister, the “root cause” of the accident has been determined, along with those responsible for this “criminal act.”
He added that a “change in electronic interlocking” was the likely cause of the accident. The minister urged people to wait for the final report.
A report by the Commissioner of Railway Safety would be made public soon and it would reveal the cause, he said.
Meanwhile, the railways said on Sunday that the Coromandel Express’s engine and coaches crashed into a goods train due to a signal fault and a “change in electronic interlocking”.
In railway signalling the electronic interlocking system sets routes for each train in a set area, ensuring the safe movement of trains along the track.
The impact of the crash threw coaches of the Coromandel Express onto a third track and they rammed into the rear carriages of the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express that was coming down the line at a high speed.
More than 3,000 passengers are thought to have been on board the two passenger trains.
Atul Karwal, chief of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), said the force of the collision left several coaches crushed. Rescuers had to cut through the wreckage to reach the passengers.
Hundreds of ambulances, doctors, nurses and rescue personnel were sent to the scene and worked for 18 hours to rescue passengers and pull out bodies.
On Sunday night, Mr Vaishnaw said train movement had been restored on the railway tracks where the accident took place.
Reports say several passengers are still missing.
Opposition leaders have called on Mr Vaishnaw to take responsibility for the tragedy and resign.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has responded by asking them not to politicise the accident.
On Saturday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was scheduled to open a brand-new high-speed train, the Vande Bharat Express, as part of his administration’s significant investment in modernising the nation’s extensive infrastructure, including its railway system.
But instead, Obama made a trip to the scene of one of the greatest rail mishaps in American history to express his sympathies.
In a three-way collision involving two passenger trains and a goods train on Friday in eastern Odisha state, authorities reported that more than 280 people were killed and over 1,100 were injured.
The deadly crash in the city of Balasore has reverberated across India, now the world’s most populous nation, renewing calls for authorities to confront safety issues in a railway system that transports more than 13 million passengers every day. While the government has recently poured millions into upgrading the system, years of neglect has left tracks to deteriorate.
The cause of Friday’s crash remains unclear, but senior state railway officials told CNN that it is suspected to have been caused by a traffic signaling failure.
The officials said the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express entered a track where a train carrying goods was stopped and slammed into it, pushing several coaches into the opposite track. Another train – the Howrah Express traveling from Yesvantpur to Howrah – hit the carriages at high speed and derailed.
A train station superintendent in Odisha state explained on Saturday that a signaling failure can occur either due to a technical malfunction or human error, as traffic signals are often handled by personnel in every station.
A “high-level inquiry” has been ordered into the collision to understand what caused the crash, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister of railways, told reporters on Saturday.
“We can’t bring back those we have lost but the government is with them (families) in their grief. This incident is very serious for the government … Whoever is found guilty will be punished severely,” Modi said, adding that the government would “leave no stone unturned.”
As the sun rose on Saturday, rescuers scrambled over the tangle of wreckage and overturned train carriages in a desperate search for survivors. Passengers joined first responders in an effort to free those trapped. Officials said the death toll was suspected to rise further, as many passengers were thought to be pinned under train cars.
Local authorities said that evening that search efforts had stopped but would resume Sunday.
“It’s still ongoing. We need to lift the wreckage and see what’s underneath… A crane has arrived, we will pull the coaches up one by one but we don’t have much hope of finding survivors,” Odisha’s fire services chief, Sudhanshu Sarangi, told local news channel NDTV.
“We’ve never seen so many dead bodies before. It’s sad but we’re trying.”
The government in the state, which has a population of about 44 million, declared a day of mourning on Saturday.
Video footage and photographs from the crash site near Bahanaga Bazar rail station showed scenes of chaos and despair. Dozens of dead bodies could be seen lying beside mangled train cars, while police officers and survivors stood nearby. Passengers’ personal belongings were strewn inside carriages, their windows crushed, spilling glass and metal debris onto the floors. Train carriages were ripped apart.
One of the passengers sitting in the second to last coach, Anshuman Purohit, told CNN that he felt a “massive shake” before the train screeched to a halt. When he opened the door, he could see the rest of the train off the tracks in a ditch.
“As we walked, all we could here was a huge wail of human cries. Bloodied people, running to our coach for help and water,” he said, adding that he could only see a fraction of the destruction.
“This was only a part of the overall accident. We couldn’t see the front. The coaches were on top of each other. Coaches on top of the wagon… People thrown out of the trains many feet away.”
Rohit Raj, a 19-year-old survivor, told CNN: “I was sleeping when all of a sudden, I heard a loud crash. There was smoke everywhere, we couldn’t see. Everyone was screaming, everyone was in shock.”
“People were trying to run and escape from the train. The coach in front of me was badly mangled. People were badly trapped. I saw people piled on top of each other. My coach derailed, but thankfully I managed to escape.”
Another survivor who did not share his name told local television he had fallen asleep and was jolted awake when the train derailed, causing about 15 people to fall on top of him.
“I was at the bottom of the pile. My hand is injured, it’s hurting a lot, and also the back of my neck,” he said. “When I came out of the train, I saw someone had lost their hand, someone had lost their limb, someone’s face was disfigured.”
Speaking to reporters Saturday, Narendra Singh Bundela, inspector general of operations at the National Disaster Response Force (NDRP), said teams have rescued passengers found alive at the site, but many bodies remain trapped under the derailed carriages.
“The coaches are very heavy and it’s been a difficult task to remove them and identify bodies,” Bundela said, adding 17 coaches were derailed and severely damaged.
“This is a serious incident and the government has ordered an inquiry,” he said. “This century for India, as far as I know, it is one of the (most) serious accidents.”
India’s extensive rail network, one of the largest in the world, was built more than 160 years ago under British colonial rule. Today, the network runs about 11,000 trains every day over 67,000 miles of tracks. It suffers from aging infrastructure and poor maintenance – factors often cited in accidents.
In 2005, at least 102 people died when a passenger train derailed in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh as it tried to cross tracks washed away by a flood. In 2011, scores were killed when a train jumped tracks in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
The death toll from Friday’s crash has already surpassed that of another infamous incident in 2016, when more than 140 people were killed in a derailment in northern Uttar Pradesh state. The same year, Modi announced huge investments in India’s railway system aimed at improving safety and connectivity.
In 2021, more than 16,000 people were killed in nearly 18,000 railway accidents across the country. According to the National Crime Records, most railway accidents – 67.7% – were due to falls from trains and collisions between trains and people on the track.
The latest crash comes as India carries out a major overhaul of its infrastructure, with the country investing millions to modernize transport links.
In February, Modi inaugurated the first section of a 1,386-kilometer (861-mile) expressway linking the capital New Delhi to the financial hub of Mumbai. Construction is also underway for the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, which aims to decongest India’s railway network. Later this year, the country will open Chenab Bridge – the world’s tallest railway bridge – in the country’s Jammu and Kashmir region.
Modi arrived at the scene in Balasore on Saturday, to survey the site, meet with emergency teams and visit injured passengers in the hospital.
More than 115 ambulances and several fire service units are involved in the rescue effort. The Indian army, teams from the National Disaster Response Force, the Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force, and the state’s fire services have been dispatched to the site.
Hundreds of people had gathered outside local hospitals to donate blood, in a massive show of solidarity and support. About 500 units of blood were collected overnight with 900 units currently in stock.
Manish, a volunteer, attempted to donate blood at Soro Block Hospital, but couldn’t enter as it was already packed with people offering to help.
“There are literally dead bodies all around,” he said. “Injured passengers are being treated outside of the hospital because of lack of beds.”
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif shared his “heartfelt condolences,” joining a chorus of other world leaders, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
Rescuers in India are frantically searching for survivors following one of the greatest rail tragedies the nation has ever seen, a collision involving three trains that left hundreds of people dead.
Following a collision involving two passenger trains and a goods train on Friday in the city of Balasore, in the eastern Odisha state, at least 288 fatalities and more than 1,000 injuries have been officially reported.
However, rescuers anticipate a higher death toll since they believe many people are still trapped beneath tipped-over carriages.
“We are not very hopeful of rescuing anyone alive,” Odisha’s fire services chief, Sudhanshu Sarangi, told local news channel NDTV.
The cause of the crash remains unclear but railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters Saturday that a “high-level inquiry” has been ordered into the collision, which took place near the Bahanaga railway station.
The incident has reverberated across India, a nation of 1.4 billion, prompting renewed calls for authorities to address safety issues that have plagued the country’s railways for decades.
India’s trains serve 13 million passengers every day, and 8 billion a year. While the government has recently invested millions to upgrade its railways, years of neglect have caused tracks to deteriorate.
Video footage and photographs from Friday’s crash site show scenes of chaos and despair. Dozens of dead bodies can be seen lying beside the mangled trains, while police officers and survivors stand nearby. Passengers’ personal belongings can be seen strewn inside carriages and windows have been crushed, spilling glass and metal debris onto the floors. Train carriages have been torn apart.
One of the passengers sitting in the second to last coach, Anshuman Purohi, told CNN that he felt a “massive shake” and realized there was something “very, very wrong.”
“I opened the door and the scale [of the disaster] revealed itself. We saw the rest of the train in front of us in a ditch. As we walked, all we could here was a huge wail of human cries. Bloodied people, running to our coach for help and water.”
Purohi, who lives in Singapore and was visiting his family in Odisha, said that a few people he was with began calling emergency services, while he helped provide water.
“After walking across the tracks, you could start to see the scale of the accident,” he said.
“This was only a part of the overall accident. We couldn’t see the front. The coaches were on top of each other. Coaches on top of the wagon… People thrown out of the trains many feet away.”
Rohit Raj, a 19-year-old survivor, told CNN: “I was sleeping when all of a sudden, I heard a loud crash. There was smoke everywhere, we couldn’t see. Everyone was screaming, everyone was in shock.”
“People were trying to run and escape from the train. The coach in front of me was badly mangled. People were badly trapped. I saw people piled on top of each other. My coach derailed, but thankfully I managed to escape.”
Another survivor who did not share his name told local television he had fallen asleep and was jolted awake when the train derailed, causing about 15 people to fall on top of him.
“I was at the bottom of the pile. My hand is injured, it’s hurting a lot, and also the back of my neck,” he said. “When I came out of the train, I saw someone had lost their hand, someone had lost their limb, someone’s face was disfigured.”
Speaking to reporters Saturday, Narendra Singh Bundela, Inspector General of Operations at the National Disaster Response Force (NDRP), said teams have rescued passengers found alive at the site, but many bodies remain trapped under the derailed carriages.
“The coaches are very heavy and it’s been a difficult task to remove them and identify bodies,” Bundela said, adding 17 coaches were derailed and severely damaged.
“This is a serious incident and the government has ordered an inquiry,” he said. “This century for India, as far as I know, it is one of the (most) serious accidents.”
More than 115 ambulances and several fire service units are involved in the rescue effort. The Indian army, teams from the National Disaster Response Force, the Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force, and the state’s fire services have been dispatched to the site.
Hundreds of people have gathered outside local hospitals to donate blood, in a massive show of solidarity and support. About 500 units of blood were collected overnight with 900 units currently in stock.
Manish, a volunteer, attempted to donate blood at Soro Block Hospital, but couldn’t enter as it was already packed with people offering to help.
“There are literally dead bodies all around,” he said. “Injured passengers are being treated outside of the hospital because of lack of beds.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his condolences on Friday. “Distressed by the train accident in Odisha. In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families,” he wrote.
Modi was on his way to visit the site of the deadly train crash in Odisha on Saturday morning, according to a statement by the Prime Minister’s Office on Twitter. Earlier in the day, he chaired a high-level meeting about the crash, his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party said.
A day of mourning will be observed in the Odisha on Saturday.
India’s extensive rail network suffers from aging infrastructure and poor maintenance – factors often cited in accidents.
In 2021, more than 16,000 people were killed in nearly 18,000 railway accidents across the country.
According to the National Crime Records, most railway accidents – 67.7% – were due to falls from trains and collisions between trains and people on the track.
The death toll from Friday’s crash has already surpassed that of another infamous incident in 2016, when more than 140 people were killed in a derailment in northern Uttar Pradesh state.
The latest crash comes as India carries out a major overhaul of its infrastructure, with the country investing millions to modernize transport links.
In February, Modi inaugurated the first section of a 1,386-kilometer (861-mile) expressway linking the capital New Delhi to the financial hub of Mumbai.
Construction is also underway for the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, which aims to decongest India’s railway network.
Later this year, the country will open Chenab Bridge – the world’s tallest railway bridge – in the country’s Jammu and Kashmir region.
In India, two passenger trains derailed, trapping hundreds of passengers within more than a dozen damaged rail cars. At least 288 people were killed and over 900 others were hurt.
Around 7 p.m. local time on Friday, the incident took place in the Balasore district of Odisha, around 137 miles south-west of Kolkata.
Attempts by desperate rescuers to release trapped passengers and collect dead were described by officials as chaotic sights of twisted wreckage.
The crash is India’s deadliest rail accident in more than two decades. The cause is still unknown.
Ten to 12 coaches of one train derailed, and debris from some of the mangled coaches fell onto a nearby track, said Amitabh Sharma, a railroad ministry spokesperson.
The debris was hit by another passenger train coming from the opposite direction, and up to three coaches of the second train also derailed, Mr Sharma said.
A third train carrying freight was also reportedly involved, but authorities have not yet confirmed it.
The death toll has continued to rise steadily throughout the night. Scores of dead bodies, covered by white sheets, lay on the ground near the train tracks as locals and rescuers raced to help survivors.
Scores of people also showed up at a local hospital to donate blood.
Odisha chief secretary Pradeep Jena tweeted that more than 200 ambulances were sent to the scene throughout the night, along with 50 buses and 45 mobile health units.
Villagers said they rushed to the site to evacuate people after hearing a loud sound created by the train coaches going off the tracks.
‘The local people really went out on a limb to help us. They not only helped in pulling out people, but retrieved our luggage and got us water,’ said Rupam Banerjee, a survivor.
Passenger Vandana Kaleda told the New Delhi Television news channel that she ‘found people falling on each other’ as her coach shook violently and veered off the tracks. She said she was lucky to survive.
Another survivor who did not give his name said he was sleeping when the impact woke him up. He said he saw other passengers with broken limbs and disfigured faces.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his thoughts were with the bereaved families.
‘May the injured recover soon,’ tweeted Mr Modi, who said he had spoken to the railway minister and that “all possible assistance” was being offered.
Despite government efforts to improve rail safety, several hundred accidents occur every year on India’s railways, the largest train network under one management in the world.
In August 1995, two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people in the worst train accident in India’s history.
In 2016, a passenger train slid off the tracks between the cities of Indore and Patna, killing 146 people.
Most train accidents are blamed on human error or outdated signalling equipment.
More than 12 million people ride 14,000 trains across India every day, travelling on 40,000 miles of track.
Apple’s major supplier, Foxconn, is set to commence iPhone manufacturing in the southern Indian state of Karnataka by April of next year.
According to the state government, the project is expected to generate approximately 50,000 job opportunities.
Foxconn, based in Taiwan, is responsible for manufacturing the majority of Apple’s iPhones. Since 2017, the company has been producing older iPhone models at a facility located in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu.
Recently, Foxconn acquired 1.2 million square meters of land near Bengaluru city in Karnataka, signaling its expansion plans. Bloomberg reported that the company intends to invest $700 million in a new factory in the state. However, the Karnataka government stated that the overall value of the project amounts to $1.59 billion.
The government announcement mentioned that the land for the factory would be handed over to Foxconn by July 1. The Reuters report stated that Foxconn aims to manufacture 20 million iPhones annually at the Karnataka plant.
Apple’s decision to diversify its supply chains and manufacture its flagship model in India is part of its strategy to reduce reliance on China amid increasing trade tensions between Beijing and Washington.
While most iPhones are currently made in China, Apple has been assembling some models in India through various suppliers, including Foxconn. However, India accounts for only 5% of total iPhone production.
Apple has faced challenges in the Indian market due to strong competition from more affordable South Korean and Chinese smartphones. In a bid to strengthen its presence in India, Apple CEO Tim Cook inaugurated the country’s first two Apple stores during his visit in April.
In Delhi, the capital of India, a 20-year-old man has been arrested by the police for the brutal stabbing and murder of a 16-year-old female friend in a public setting.
Disturbing video footage of the assault shows the man repeatedly stabbing the girl while using a large stone to crush her head. Despite the horrific nature of the attack, many bystanders can be seen watching or simply walking by.
Authorities have revealed that the couple had a romantic relationship and had quarreled just hours before the murder took place on Sunday. The girl was on her way to attend a friend’s son’s birthday party when she was viciously attacked, according to senior police official Ravi Kumar Singh.
Delhi: CCTV video of gruesome murder of a minor hindu girl by sahil s/o sarfaraz goes viral. She was stabbed multiple times and crushed with stone in full public view in Shahbad diary area of Delhi; Killer absconding. FIR registered pic.twitter.com/B3HdJ3Y9dY
The suspect, identified as Sahil, was apprehended near Bulandshahr district in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh. The investigation is ongoing, and further details cannot be disclosed at this time, stated Mr. Singh.
The viral video of this gruesome murder has sparked widespread anger and outrage on social media. Hashtags such as #DelhiMurder and #DelhiCrime, along with the name of the locality where the crime occurred, Shahbad Dairy, have been trending on Twitter as people express their shock and condemnation.
In a tweet, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal described the murder as “very sad and unfortunate” and said that “criminals have become fearless, there is no fear of the police”.
“The crime was captured on CCTV. Several people saw this, but did not pay heed. Delhi has become extremely unsafe for women and girls,” news agency ANI quoted the Delhi Commission for Women chief Swati Maliwal as saying.
The chairperson of the National Commission for Women Rekha Sharma said the crime showed the “insensitivity” of the people of Delhi.
“There were several people at the spot when the incident took place but no one took any action to help the girl. The case should be heard in a fast-track court and the verdict should come as early as possible,” she said.
This is not the first gruesome crime in India where bystanders have been called out for their apathy. In the past too, citizens have been criticised for watching or making videos instead of helping victims of crime.
There was similar outrage and much introspection after the December 2012 gangrape – and the subsequent death – of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student on a bus in Delhi.
Her male companion, who was also assaulted but survived, later recounted how they lay injured and bleeding – but no-one stopped to help them for 25 minutes.
A young job seeker reportedly fell victim to an alleged sex racket orchestrated by a woman from New Town.
The victim claims that she was coerced into engaging in sexual activities with two Ghanaian footballers at a guest house in the city, where she was subjected to gang rape by the duo.
The New Town police responded to the woman’s complaint and subsequently arrested the two footballers and the woman involved.
According to the police, the woman in her late twenties was living alone in a rented flat in Gouranganagar, New Town, following her separation from her husband.
As she was unemployed, she approached her neighbor, Lisa Collins, for financial assistance. Collins offered her some work, leading to the unfortunate events that transpired.
According to the complaint, on May 16, Collins asked the woman to come with her for a job. “They reached a guest house in Picnic garden where the two Ghanaian footballers lived and she was forced to spend the night with them.
The woman complained the two men had sex with her on multiple occasions through the night against her wish and was let go only the next morning,” said an officer of Bidhannagar City Police.
Battered and bruised, the woman stayed at her rented accommodation for two days, before she gathered courage and strength to turn up at the New Town police station and lodge a complaint against Collins and the two footballers on Friday.
Acting on her complaint, New Town police first arrested Collins and then took her to the Tiljala address where the two footballers were arrested.
Christopher Nars (28) and Moses Zutah (24) are both residents of Ghana who came to India on student Visa and were hired as part time footballers for different clubs across the state in exchange of money.
Cops booked them under IPC sections 376 D (gangrape), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention).
If convicted the trio can face rigorous imprisonment for life. They were produced before a Barasat court on Sunday and were remanded in police custody.
(The victim’s identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault).
Through Iran and the exclusion of a once-essential Pakistan, India is enhancing its soft influence in Afghanistan by supplying vital supplies.
According to a recent statement made to Nikkei Asia by a representative of the United Nations World Food Programme, an Indian gift of 20,000 metric tonnes of wheat is anticipated to reach Afghanistan in the coming months. This will fulfil a commitment New Delhi made in March to export the wheat through the Chabahar port in Iran. The final destination of the goods is the Afghan province of Herat over the Iranian border.
Hunger in Afghanistan remains widespread, with the WFP estimating that more than 19 million people suffer from acute food insecurity, when a lack of adequate food puts lives or livelihoods in immediate danger. A recent Taliban-imposed ban on female U.N. staff in Afghanistan caused an uproar in the international community and raised additional fears for the country’s future, even prompting hints at a U.N. pullout. But the WFP representative clarified the organization is committed to delivering aid where hunger threatens the lives of millions.
“The humanitarian needs across the country remain very high,” the representative said, “and [India’s] contribution will help us reach hungry families where needs are highest.”
The move not only reinforces India’s position as a key provider of essential aid to Afghanistan but also highlights New Delhi’s efforts to craft positive relations, even though it does not formally recognize the Taliban regime that seized power in August 2021. India reestablished its diplomatic presence in mid-2022 by deploying a “technical team” in the Afghan capital. Experts say the region is simply too important to leave.
In addition, the latest food aid marks a geopolitically significant change in the way India supplies assistance.
In response to the crisis in Afghanistan, India initially suggested trucking 50,000 tonnes of wheat through archrival Pakistan. Following extensive deliberations and prodding from the Afghan Taliban, Pakistan granted approval in November 2021. Consequently, the first shipment of Indian wheat was transported via the Pakistani transit route in February 2022.
However, despite India’s request, Pakistan did not grant an extension to the stipulated period, limiting the shipments to 40,000 tonnes.
Using the port at Chabahar offers substantial advantages over sending wheat through Pakistan, skirting the tense relationship between the nuclear-armed neighbors and allowing India to help Afghans more effectively.
“Use of Chahbahar negates the indispensability of Pakistan in terms of India reaching out to Afghanistan and Central Asia, especially since [Islamabad’s] own relations have gone south with the Taliban and ours have gotten better,” said Ashok Sajjanhar, a former Indian ambassador to Kazakhstan, Sweden and Latvia.
“India has always had a historical and civilizational connect with the people [of Afghanistan],” he added. He also stressed the importance of having Indian officials in Afghanistan: “We want to have a technical presence and not a diplomatic one on Afghan soil,” he said. “We want to ensure that the aid we are going to supply reaches the rightful beneficiaries and not used by the authorities to serve its own people.”
Asked if India’s use of Chahbahar should worry Pakistan, Sajjanhar said it might be “a matter of concern.”
Islamabad’s own relations with the Afghan Taliban have soured, in part over the Kabul rulers’ inability or unwillingness to rein in Pakistani Taliban militants. And now India is tightening ties in a country Islamabad has long considered part of its sphere of influence.
A Pakistani expert, however, downplayed the shift, stressing that India and Afghanistan are sovereign states and their relationship should not be viewed through the prism of Pakistan.
“I think India and Afghanistan are free countries and must pursue autonomous, independent relations with each other,” said Mosharraf Zaidi, senior fellow at the TABADLab think tank and a former policy adviser to Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “In fact, the more regionally integrated countries are amongst each other, the better it is for Pakistan.”
Afghanistan’s internationally isolated officials have naturally welcomed India’s outreach.
“India is an important country in the region, and Afghanistan values it,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told Nikkei Asia. “We want to have good, friendly, and strong people-to-people relationships with India. The fact that India has just announced a donation of 20,000 metric tonnes of wheat is a great help to the people of Afghanistan, and we are very thankful to the people and government of India for this support.”
There are other signs of deepening ties, though New Delhi is keeping expectations in check. In mid-March, after India promised the wheat, the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a memo about a four-day training program for ministry officials through the Indian Embassy. Soon afterward, India clarified in its own local media that the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) program under the Indian External Affairs Ministry is fully online and does not reflect a change in New Delhi’s policy toward Kabul.
Nevertheless, Mujahid acknowledged the training and thanked the embassy for its engagement.
Zaidi, the Pakistani expert, suggested that ties between Pakistan’s neighbors are inevitable and that the key is to solve the nuclear powers’ own rivalry.
“It’s understandable that eventually the Taliban and India would get along, and Iran and India would get along,” Zaidi said. “I think the question for me is how Pakistan can develop a framework for a normal relationship with India in which key issues are resolved to a point where countries don’t feel threatened by each other.”
The Indian government has made it compulsory for cough syrup makers to get samples tested before exporting their products.
Manufacturers of cough syrup in India are required to submit samples for testing before exportation according to the Indian government.
Starting 1 June, these companies will have to get a certificate of analysis from a government-approved laboratory.
The rule change comes after some Indian-made cough syrups were linked to deaths in The Gambia and Uzbekistan.
The controversies had cast a pall over India’s pharmaceutical industry, which makes a third of the world’s medicines.
The announcement was made by the Director General of Foreign Trade, which said in a notification that cough syrups would be permitted to be exported “subject to the export sample being tested”.
It also mentioned a list of central and state government laboratories across the country where samples could be tested.
Last week, Reuters had reported that India was considering a policy change after domestic cough syrups were linked to child deaths abroad.
Many Indian pharma companies have come under scrutiny for the quality of their drugs, with experts raising concerns over their manufacturing practices.
In March, India’s drug regulator cancelled the manufacturing licence of Marion Biotech, whose cough syrups were linked to 18 child deaths in Uzbekistan.
The World Health Organization also issued an alert in October linking four Indian-made cough syrups to child deaths in The Gambia.
India later said that the medicines complied with specifications when tested at home, but the WHO responded that it stood by “the action taken”.
According to Bank of Baroda, a state-controlled lender in India, the country’s imports of oil from Russia increased by a factor of ten last year, resulting in savings of approximately $5 billion (£4 billion) as the nation increased its crude purchases from Moscow.
While Western nations have decreased their energy imports from Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been selling energy at discounted prices to countries such as India and China.
India, the world’s third-largest oil importer, previously relied on Russian oil for only 2% of its annual crude imports in 2021.
However, that proportion has now surged to almost 20%, according to Bank of Baroda.
Bank of Baroda reported that in 2021, Russian oil made up only 2% of India’s annual crude imports, but that figure has since increased significantly to almost 20%.
As per the data, India saved approximately $89 per tonne of crude by purchasing oil from Russia during the last financial year.
Despite facing pressure from the US and Europe, India has refused to comply with Western sanctions on Russian imports and has not explicitly condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
India has defended its oil purchases by stating that it is a country heavily dependent on energy imports and with millions living in poverty, it cannot afford to pay higher prices.
According to S. Jaishankar, India’s External Affairs Minister, in a TV interview last year, since the Ukraine conflict started, Europe has imported six times more energy from Russia than India.
“Europe has managed to reduce its imports while doing it in a manner that is comfortable,” he said.
Mr Jaishankar added: “If it is a matter of principle why did Europe not cut on the first day?”
With no end in sight to the conflict, some analysts expect Russia to continue to offer cheap oil to Asia’s biggest energy importers.
“We expect Russian crude intake to remain limited to these two countries [India and China], sustaining the steep discounts,” Vandana Hari, from energy analysis firm Vanda Insights told the BBC.
India’s oil refiners will continue to maximise their profit margins for as long as they can, but will simply “go back to their usual crude diet” if the sanctions were to be lifted, she added.
A top city official, in Ludhiana in the northern Indian state of Punjab has disclosed that a gas leak has resulted in at least 11 deaths and 11 hospital admissions.
A team from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was at the site on Sunday, according to a video feed shared by the ANI news agency. Police were seen patrolling while wearing masks and asking locals to keep out of an area that had been cordoned off, the video showed.
Bhagwant Mann, Punjab’s chief minister, expressed sadness over the deadly leak.
“The incident of gas leak in the factory in Giaspura area of Ludhiana is very sad,” Mann said in a tweet. “Police, government and NDRF teams are present at the spot. All possible help is being provided.”
Ludhiana Deputy Commissioner Surabhi Malik told reporters the deaths were a likely result of “gas contamination”.
“It is quite likely that maybe some chemical reacted with methane in manholes,” she was quoted as saying by ANI. “… All of this is being verified. NDRF is retrieving samples.”
India was the site of one of the worst industrial disasters in history when gas leaked from a pesticide plant in the central city of Bhopal in 1984. About 3,500 people, mainly locals living in shanties around the Union Carbide plant, died in the days that followed and thousands more in the following years. People still suffer its after-effects now.
In 2020, a gas leak near a chemical plant in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh killed at 11 people. At least 800 were taken to hospital with breathing difficulties and irritated skin.
At least 200 pupils were admitted to hospital after a gas leak in 2017 near their school in southern New Delhi.
The blatant murder of a former politician and his brother in front of live television cameras while they were being held by the police has reignited resentment about the hazy border between politics and crime in the state with the most population.
Despite having a population of more than 240 million, Uttar Pradesh has long been one of India’s poorest states due to a reputation for organized crime and corruption.
However, what happened on Saturday was very alarming and has India’s attention.
Atiq Ahmed, a former lawmaker and convicted criminal, was gunned down alongside his brother Ashraf at point blank range by at least one gunman who posed as a journalist in an incident that was broadcast live.
A former Samajwadi Party member of India’s parliament, Atiq was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to life in prison last month following a long dual career as both a politician and a mainstay of Uttar Pradesh’s criminal underworld.
The murder in the city of Prayagraj took place while police were escorting the pair for a medical check-up, the state’s Police Commissioner Ramit Sharma told reporters.
Dramatic footage showed the two handcuffed brothers surrounded by a press gaggle as a gunman fired multiple shots.
Three people who were posing as journalists at the time have been arrested for questioning, Sharma added.
The extrajudicial killing has sparked widespread concern about the state of law and order in Uttar Pradesh as well as fears of retaliation.
Gilles Verniers, a political science professor at Ashoka University in New Delhi, whose research has focused on electoral and party politics in Uttar Pradesh, told CNN Saturday’s incident represents “a break-down of the very concept of the rule of law.”
“The larger significance is what this means for the rule of law and the transformation of the meaning of the rule of law from a system of justice that is supposed to follow due process and be impartial and not be arbitrary into a form of self justice in the hand of the executive that is fundamentally arbitrary, violent and partisan,” Verniers said.
Following the incident, internet services were temporarily suspended across the city of Prayagraj, also known as Allahabad.
Internet shutdowns have become increasingly common in India, including as recently as last month when authorities blocked access to the internet in Punjab for days as police searched for a Sikh activist who was on the run.
The government has repeatedly attempted to justify blocking internet access on the grounds of preserving public safety amid fears of communal violence. But critics say the shutdowns are yet another blow to the country’s commitment to freedom of speech and access to information.
Long before he was a politician, Atiq was known for his criminal underworld links, a duality that is not uncommon in the rough and tumble of Uttar Pradesh’s political scene.
At the age of just 17, Atiq was accused of murder. A decade later, he was elected as a member of Uttar Pradesh’s legislative assembly where he served five times, from 1989 to 2004. He also served as a member of India’s national parliament from 2004 to 2009.
“He used politics to his own advantage to further not only his political career but also his criminal estate and criminal activities,” said Vikram Singh, formerly the Director General of Police in Uttar Pradesh who had several dealings with Atiq, including arresting him under the Gangsters Act in 2007.
He came from humble beginnings, as the son of a horse cart driver, and rose to be “something akin to the godfather,” Singh told CNN, adding that the list of crimes Atiq had been accused of throughout his life ranged from murder and robbery to extortion and land grabs.
In March, Atiq was sentenced to life in prison for the 2006 kidnapping of Umesh Pal, the prime witness in a 2005 murder case for which Atiq was himself the main suspect, CNN affiliate News18 reported.
Atiq’s death came a week after police shot and killed his son Asad. Asad was the main suspect in the February murder of Umesh Pal – the man Atiq was convicted of kidnapping, Reuters reported.
Police in Uttar Pradesh have killed more than 180 suspected criminals during encounters over past six years, according to Reuters.
Questions have been raised as to whether police gave adequate security to the two brothers who were surrounded by reporters.
Atiq and his brother were being escorted by police for what Singh said was a routine medical check-up when they were shot.
“The police security should have been fool proof and fail proof which it was not,” Singh said. “The shoot out that happened is unacceptable.”
CNN reached out to Uttar Pradesh police for comment on the situation but did not receive a response prior to publication.
Following the incident, the Uttar Pradesh state government announced it will form two three-member Special Task Forces (SIT) to investigate the killing of Atiq and his brother.
But the murders have raised questions about the governance of Uttar Pradesh, particularly from opponents of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party which currently holds political power in the state.
Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal state and president of the Trinamool Congress Party, claimed in a tweet Sunday that the incident illustrated a “total collapse of law and order in Uttar Pradesh.”
Mahua Moitra, a member of parliament with the Trinamool Congress Party who has vocally criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the past, tweeted that the “BJP has turned India into a mafia republic.”
Noting that the two brothers had been shot dead “in front of a zillion policemen and cameras” she declared “this is the death of the rule of law.”
The state’s former chief minister, the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, suggested the death of his former party member prompted concerns about public safety under BJP rule.
“When someone can be killed by firing openly amidst the security cordon of the police, then what about the safety of the general public,” Yadav tweeted.
Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party, who also previously served as the state’s chief minister, said the shooting gave way to “serious question marks” over the functioning of the government, headed by the BJP’s Yogi Adityanath.
Responding to allegations about the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh, Adityanath said people should “not pay heed to rumors.”
Meanwhile India’s Minister of Information Anurag Thakur suggested opposition party criticism of the attack was also hypocritical.
“These same mafia leaders used to attack common people, kill and loot them,” he told reporters. “Never heard any of these politicians speaking against it.”
South African opposition party the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has demanded that Indian authorities detain and prosecute Tibetan leader for child abuse after a video of Dalai Lama acting inappropriately toward a boy went viral
In the clip, the 87-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader is seen kissing a young boy on the lips and asking him to “suck his tongue” at a public event. The incident appears to have taken place at the Dalai Lama’s temple in Dharamshala in February.
Following an international outcry over the issue, the Dalai Lama has apologised, saying that he regretted the incident.
Sticking one’s tongue out can be a form of greeting in Tibet.
The EFF said the “lame apology” should be rejected as it came a month after the incident.
Its statement said the Indian authorities needed to send a stern warning “to all those who dare to harm children that they will be prosecuted harshly regardless of their status”.
The Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India since fleeing Tibet in 1959, following an uprising against Chinese rule there.
In India’s Maharashtra state, twelve individuals have passed away from heatstroke and numerous others have been hospitalized after attending an awards event.
The government-sponsored event lasted several hours and was held outside under a scorching sun.
The event on Sunday, which was meant to honor a well-known social crusader, drew thousands of attendees.
After attending the event, many attendees complained of dehydration and other heat-related illnesses.
Navi Mumbai – a city close to financial hub Mumbai – where the event was held, recorded a maximum temperature of 38C (100F) on Sunday. Health experts have advised people to stay out of the sun during the peak heat hours of 11am to 4pm, especially during April, which is considered to be one of the hottest months in India.
Photos of the event show thousands sitting directly under the sun, with no roof or covering providing any kind of shelter.
Officials told the media that refreshments had been provided at the venue through the day and that booths had been set up to provide medical aid to people, but opposition parties alleged that the event was mismanaged and that it should not have been held at this time of the year.
The event was organised at the Kharghar International Corporate Park grounds to confer an award on social worker Dattatreya Narayan Dharmadhikari, popularly known as Appasaheb Dharmadhikari.
It was attended by top politicians, including India’s Home Minister Amit Shah and leaders from the state’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Local media reported that hundreds of thousands of people attended the event and that it went on for over three hours. Numerous people complained of dehydration, high blood pressure and exhaustion, while close to two dozen people were admitted to hospital.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde called the incident “unexpected and painful” and announced 500,000 rupees ($6,102; £4,913) as compensation to the families of each of the deceased. He said the government would provide free treatment to those who fell ill during the event.
Opposition leaders have accused the government of jeopardising people’s lives. Former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said the event had “not been planned properly” and called for an investigation.
Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe Patil accused the state government of negligence and said people had died because the event was held in April.
India recorded it’s hottest February since 1901 this year, and the country’s weather department has also forecasted an “enhanced probability” of heatwaves between March and May.
Flowers, a coconut and a round of cheers were part of the celebrations following the inaugural test run through India’s first underwater metro tunnel on Wednesday.
The Kolkata metro’s newest line, set to open to the public in November, passes underneath the Hooghly River in the city’s northeast, with the tunnel 32 meters (105 feet) below the water.
“This is a historic moment for Metro Railway,” Kausik Mitra, chief public relations officer for the Kolkata metro system, said in a statement.
“This is a revolutionary step in providing a modern transport system to the people of Kolkata and suburbs.”
The line will connect the soon-to-open metro station of Howrah Maidan and the existing station of Esplanade on the opposite side of the river, traveling 520 meters (1700 feet) in just 45 seconds. Once open, Howrah Maidan will be the deepest metro station in India.
To bless the new tunnel and train, officials conducted a puja, or Hindu religious ritual, to bring good luck, after the train successfully pulled into the station at Howrah Maidan.
Bright-orange saffron flowers were sprinkled around the conductor’s compartment inside the train, and one worker broke a coconut amid cheers and applause from his colleagues.
The full metro line through Howrah Maidan will be 4.8 km (three miles) long.
Kolkata was the first city in India to have a metro system.
Infrastructure is a major national initiative under the leadership of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Earlier this year, the country celebrated opening the first stretch of a new eight-lane express highway connecting the cities of New Delhi and Mumbai. The first completed section links the capital with the city of Lalsot in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, a popular destination for tourists.
And in January, the MV Ganga Vilas ship departed from Varanasi to sail on waterways including the Ganges River for a 1,988-mile journey lasting 51 days, clinching the title of the world’s longest river cruise trip.
After a video of the Dalai Lama acting inappropriately toward a boy went viral, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a South African opposition group, has demanded that Indian authorities detain and prosecute the Tibetan leader for child abuse.
The 87-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader can be seen in the video inviting a young child to “suck his tongue” while kissing him on the lips at a public gathering.
The incident seems to have occurred in February at the temple of the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala.
The Dalai Lama has apologized, saying that he regrets the occurrence, in response to a widespread international outrage over the matter.
In Tibet, sticking one’s tongue out might be a sign of welcoming.
The EFF said the “lame apology” should be rejected as it came a month after the incident.
Its statement said the Indian authorities needed to send a stern warning “to all those who dare to harm children that they will be prosecuted harshly regardless of their status”.
The Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India since fleeing Tibet in 1959, following an uprising against Chinese rule there.
A $160 million fine issued on Google by the nation’s antitrust agency in a case involving Android’s monopoly on the market has been maintained by an appeals court in India.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) conclusions were accurate, according to the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), and Google was responsible for paying the penalties.
Nonetheless, it overturned four of the ten antitrust rules that the company was subject to.
Android is the operating system used by more than 95% of smartphones in India.
The CCI assessed the penalties for “unfair” business practices in October after accusing Google of abusing its dominating position.
It also asked Google to make several changes to the Android ecosystem. This included not forcing manufacturers to pre-install the entire suite of Google apps and allowing users to choose their default search engine.
The Android-related inquiry was started in 2019, following complaints by consumers of Android smartphones. The case was similar to the one Google faced in Europe, where regulators imposed a $5bn fine on the company, saying it used its Android operating system to gain unfair advantage in the market.
Google challenged the fine and the directives in India’s Supreme Court, saying “no other jurisdiction has ever asked for such far-reaching changes”.
It argued that the changes would force the company to alter arrangements with more than 1,100 device manufacturers and thousands of app developers.
The top court, however, refused to block the CCI directives and said that a lower court could continue hearing the appeal.
In January, Google agreed to co-operate with the watchdog and announced a series of changes to its Android system in India.
But the ruling by NCLAT means that the tech giant can stop users from removing its pre-installed apps from their phones.
Google can also continue to impose curbs on users downloading apps without using its app store and is free to block third-party app stores from its Play Store.
In a criminal defamation lawsuit, Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has been given a two-year prison term.
The Gujarat state court found Mr. Gandhi guilty for remarks he made in 2019 during an electoral rally regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s last name.
He was given a 30-day bail and will appeal the conviction, so he won’t be going to jail right away.
A year before the scheduled general elections, the punishment hearing was attended by the Congress party MP.
Speaking at an election rally in Karnataka state in April 2019, ahead of the last general election, Mr Gandhi had said: “Why do all these thieves have Modi as their surname? Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, Narendra Modi.”
Nirav Modi is a fugitive Indian diamond tycoon while Lalit Modi is a former chief of the Indian Premier League who has been banned for life by the country’s cricket board. Mr Gandhi argued that he had made the comment to highlight corruption and it was not directed against any community.
The case against him was filed on the basis of a complaint by Purnesh Modi, a lawmaker from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, who said that Mr Gandhi’s comments had defamed the entire Modi community.
But some have said they are puzzled by the order.
Legal scholar Gautam Bhatia tweeted that “references to a generic class of persons” – surnames in this case – are not “actionable unless an individual can show a direct reference to themselves”.
“If a man says ‘all lawyers are thieves’, then I, as a lawyer, cannot file a case against him for defamation unless I can show its imputation aimed at me,” Mr Bhatia said.
India’s criminal defamation law is British-era legislation under which there can be a maximum prison sentence of two years, a fine or both.
Free speech advocates have often argued that the law goes against the principles of freedom and that it is is used by politicians to silence their critics.
In 2016, some top Indian politicians including Mr Gandhi filed legal pleas arguing for defamation to be decriminalised. But India’s Supreme Court upheld the validity of the law, saying that the “right to free speech cannot mean that a citizen can defame the other”.
The Congress party tweeted that Mr Gandhi would appeal and said “we will fight and win”.
Mr Gandhi has not commented publicly yet but has tweeted a quote in Hindi from India’s independence leader Mahatma Gandhi: “My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God, and non-violence the means to get it.”
His lawyer, Kirit Panwala, told BBC Gujarati that Mr Gandhi had told the judge after the order that he had made the speech “in favour of democracy”.
He also said that their defence of Mr Gandhi was based on four points: “Firstly, Mr Gandhi is not a resident of Gujarat and so, before the complaint, an inquiry should be conducted. Secondly, there is no community named Modi. Thirdly, there is no association of people with Modi as their surname and lastly, there was no ill intention behind Mr Gandhi’s speech.”
Some have raised questions over Mr Gandhi’s status as a member of parliament after the conviction.
Defamation, by itself, cannot be a ground for disqualification in India. An MP can be disqualified from the office for offences ranging from promoting enmity, and election-related fraud. But they can also be disqualified if sentenced for two years or more for an offence.
Mr Gandhi is the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, which has given three prime ministers to India. His great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was the first and longest-serving prime minister of India. His grandmother, Indira Gandhi, was the first female prime minister of the country, and his father, Rajiv Gandhi, was India’s youngest prime minister.
Their party, the Congress, governed India almost continuously – except for a few years – from independence in 1947 to 2014, when Narendra Modi’s BJP swept to power by a landslide. Since then, the Congress has become a shadow of its former self, and was routed again by the BJP in the 2019 general election.
Last Friday, in Accra, a first-ever ceremony was held to commemorate the almost 70 years of friendship and bilateral ties betweenGhana and India.
Dubbed: ‘India-Ghana Partnership Day’, the ceremony afforded the two countries the opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to work together to scale-up bilateral relations for their mutual benefit.
They also expressed their commitment to strengthen political, economic, cultural and multilateral-level partnerships, while advancing collaboration in areas such as arts and culture, medicine, security, agriculture, technology, cyber security and education.
The celebration brought together dignitaries, including Members of Parliament(MPs), traditional leaders, state officials and members of the business community, at the residence of the Indian High Commissioner in Accra.
They included the National Security Minister, Albert Kan-Dapaah; the Volta Regional Minister, Dr Archibald Yao Letsa; a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong; the Agbogbomefia of the Asogli State, Togbe Afede XIV; a member of the Council of State, Sam Okudzeto; the MP for Tema West, Carlos Ahenkorah, and some alumni of the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC).
India-Ghana Day will be celebrated annually to bring together stakeholders to discuss issues concerning both countries for their mutual benefit.
Strong bond
Addressing the gathering, the Indian High Commissioner to Ghana, Sugandh Rajaram, said India and Ghana had enjoyed intense bilateral relations for years, adding that India had been supporting Ghana’s development by providing assistance in developmental projects through the provision of lines of credit (LoC) and grants.
“In the last two decades, we have extended more than half a billion dollars of concessional credit to Ghana for development projects and another half a billion dollars for new projects for critical infrastructure,” he said.
Mr Rajaram said India had entered a critical phase of its development trajectory in the next 25 years and expressed the hope that it would scale up the economic relationship between Ghana and India to new heights.
“We are looking at building a new economic India and the element to achieve that is to focus on small and medium enterprise capacity expertise to transform the economy through the use of new technologies,” he said.
He said a strong partnership with Ghana was critical to take charge of issues concerning the global south at the global level.
“Our developmental partnership with developing countries is also to ensure that the rich resources of Africa are used for the development of African countries through capacity building,” he added.
He thanked stakeholders of the two countries for partnering not only in the political and the economic spheres but also among the people of societies.
Development
Mr Ampratwum-Sarpong, for his part, said the celebration was timely, as it offered the two countries the opportunity to raise awareness of the collaborative endeavours between them, while taking stock of collective achievements and challenges.
He said Ghana had benefited from various training programmes and educational opportunities in diverse fields through the ITEC, which was established in 1964 to build the capacity of India’s friendly international partners, including Ghana.
He thanked the businesses and leaders of the Indian community for partnering Ghanaian businesses and contributing significantly to Ghana’s economy and expressed Ghana’s readiness to work with them to develop both countries.
The host of Onua Maakye, Captain Smart, has bemoaned the overabundance of Indian and Spanish television programs in Ghana’s media.
He has urged the President to take the situation seriously and claims that it has increased unemployment in the nation.
According to him, the movie industry has fallen flat due to the switch to the ‘twinovelas’ and rendered actors in the industry redundant, calling on the government to ban it outrightly.
Speaking about the Ghanaian cultural heritage with focus on how to communicate with dressing as part of Media General and Onua TV’s celebration of Ghana Month, Mr. Smart was livid how foreign content has flooded the local media screens gradually obliterating the very heritage supposed to be imparted unto the younger generation through movies.
“Would you go to America and see CNN showing Agya Koo’s movie? But today, even GBC has joined the foreign telenovelas crusade and they are also showing foreign operas with Twi dubbing,” he said in Twi Friday, March 3, 2023.
“Today those in the Ghanaian movie industry don’t have anything to do that’s why Kwaku Manu had to take solace in ‘Ɔdɔ Fever’. How could you have allowed Agya Koo, Mercy Asiedu, Lil Win, Emelia Brobbey and others to be there and be showing these things on our screens? Mr. President, with all humility, please ban it (India and Spanish series in Twi),” he said.
He was the only player, according to Cricket Australia, who was unable to travel to India for the Test series.
Usman Khawaja, the Australian opener, missed the team’s flight to India for their four-Test tour due to a visa holdup, according to Cricket Australia (CA).
According to a CA spokesperson, the batsman, who was born in Pakistan, was the only member of Australia’s team who did not board the flight on Wednesday because his visa was late.
Khawaja posted online a meme from the popular Netflix series Narcos where infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar sits on a garden chair staring into space, with the caption “Me waiting for my Indian Visa like… #stranded #dontleaveme #standard #anytimenow”.
CA was expecting the visa to arrive later on Wednesday and said Khawaja had been booked on a flight out on Thursday.
Some team support staff are also flying out on Thursday.
In 2011, Khawaja had said he was denied entry into India “because he was not born in Australia”. However, since then Khawaja has visited India several times.
Pakistan and India have had fraught relations since partition in 1947 and those tensions have routinely seeped into sports.
Australia will try to win their first Test series in India in almost a decade. Tests will be played in Nagpur, New Delhi, Dharamsala and the last one at the world’s largest cricket stadium in Ahmedabad.
After being left out of the Test side for about two years, Khawaja made a stunning return against England in the 2021-22 Ashes.
He notched up his 4,000th Test run in a recent match against South Africa in Sydney, where he was 195 not out.
The Sukhoi-30 and Mirage 2000 pilots are receiving assistance from rescue operations taking place in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
In an apparent midair collision that occurred during training about 300 kilometres (185 miles) south of the capital, New Delhi, two fighter jets of the Indian Air Force have crashed.
On Saturday morning, both aircraft took off from the Gwalior airbase, which is located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of where they crashed.
“We have located the wreckage of one of the planes and found an injured pilot in the Pahadgarh forests,” officer Dharmender Gaur told AFP news agency.
“The other plane has likely fallen further away from the site and we have sent teams to locate it.”
Meanwhile, local administrator Ankit Asthana told Reuters news agency two of the three crew members from one jet were rescued and rushed to hospital.
The status of the third crew member was not immediately clear, and no details were released on the crew of the second plane.
The aircraft that crashed in India’s Madhya Pradesh state were a Sukhoi-30 and a Mirage 2000, ANI news agency said in a tweet, citing defence sources.
Saturday’s is the latest in a string of aviation accidents involving India’s military air fleet.
Five army soldiers were killed last October when their helicopter crashed in Arunachal Pradesh state, near the country’s militarised and disputed border with China.
It was the second military chopper crash in the northeastern state that month, coming weeks after a Cheetah helicopter came down near the town of Tawang, killing its pilot.
iNCOVACC, a product of Bharat Biotech, is a nasal drop that triggers an immune response in the tissues lining the nasal cavity.
A spray-based Covid vaccine for inhalation was authorised in China in September 2022.
In the lining of the nose and upper airways, where Covid typically enters the body, nasal vaccines, according to scientists, may provide supplemental immunity.
Nasal spray vaccines have also been the subject of investigation by research teams in the US and the UK.
In November, India’s drug regulator approved the use of iNCOVACC as a heterologous booster dose – a booster for people who had previously received two doses of Covishied or Covaxin, the two main Indian vaccines – in emergency situations among adults.
In December, it was approved by the drug regulator as a primary vaccine and as a subsequent booster shot in adults.
The vaccine will cost 800 rupees ($10; £8) per dose in private hospitals and 325 rupees per dose in government hospitals and can be booked on the government’s online platform. Two doses are to be taken 28 days apart.
iNCOVACC uses a adenovirus as a carrier for the genetic code that teaches the body how to fight the infection. Adenoviruses used in the vaccines are harmless transporters which have been modified so they cannot replicate or cause infection.
Dr Krishna Ella, chairman of Bharat Biotech, told ANI news agency that the vaccine was “easy to deliver” as it didn’t need a syringe or needle, and that it produced a broader immune response as compared to injectable Covid vaccines.
India has administered over two billion Covid jabs so far. More than 70% of the Indian population has taken at least two doses, according to the federal health ministry.
In January 2022, India began giving boosters to healthcare and frontline workers, and those above 60 years with comorbidities. It was later expanded to all adults. However, the pace of booster doses administrated has been slow.
In his new memoir, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mentioned that in February 2019, India and Pakistan were “close” to a “nuclear conflagration.”
Following an assault on Indian troops in Kashmir, Delhi launched airstrikes against militants in Pakistani territory.
At that time, Pakistan claimed to have downed two Indian military aircraft and captured a fighter pilot.
Kashmir is a region that both India and Pakistan claim as their own but only partially govern.
India has long accused Pakistan of backing separatist militants in the Kashmir valley – a charge Islamabad denies. The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought three wars since independence from Britain and partition in 1947. All but one were over Kashmir.
In Never Give An Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, Mr Pompeo says he does not think the world properly knows just how close the India-Pakistan rivalry came to spilling over into a nuclear conflagration in February 2019″.
“The truth is, I don’t know precisely the answer either; I just know it was too close,” he writes.
Mr Pompeo says he will “never forget the night” he was in Hanoi at a summit “negotiating with the North Koreans on nuclear weapons” when “India and Pakistan started threatening each other in connection with the decades-long dispute over the northern border region of Kashmir.”
After the attack on Indian troops that killed more than 40 soldiers – “an Islamist terrorist attack… probably enabled in part by Pakistan’s lax counter-terror policies”, according to Mr Pompeo – India had responded with air strikes inside Pakistan. “The Pakistanis shot down a plane in a subsequent dogfight and kept the Indian pilot prisoner.”
Two documentaries, All That Breathes and The Elephant Whisperers, as well as the catchy Naatu Naatu song, make the cut.
Getting three nominations for the 2023 Oscars, including one for the best original song and two for documentaries, is a big deal for Indian cinema.
The three-hour Telugu epic RRR’s catchy musical number Naatu Naatu was included in the nominations revealed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Tuesday.
The nomination serves as an additional boost for the song, which earlier this month also took home the Golden Globe for best song, marking the first time an Indian film had won an honour at the ceremony.
“I feel like I’m on top of the world. This is the best feeling,” said music director M M Keeravaani, who added that he was not surprised with the nomination because he was “very confident in his work”.
Despite not being submitted as India’s official Oscars pick, RRR, an unapologetically over-the-top action flick, has built grassroots support to become a hugely popular favourite in Hollywood in recent months.
Its fans include Avatar director James Cameron, who was seen praising Rajamouli in a recent video that went viral on social media, prompting hopes of a best picture Oscar nomination.
The film India instead submitted for best international feature, Gujarati-language Chhello Show (Last Film Show) by filmmaker Pan Nalin, failed to land a nomination.
“No shade to the movie they did choose, which is actually very good, but RRR was a slam dunk,” Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis said.
Two Indian-made documentaries also made it to the Oscars nominations: All That Breathes for the best documentary feature film and The Elephant Whisperers for the best documentary short.
All That Breathes, a story of two brothers trying to protect Delhi’s black kites, is only the second Indian-made documentary to be nominated in the long documentary format after Writing With Fire in 2021.
Shaunak Sen told India’s NDTV broadcaster it took his team three years to make the documentary, which he called an “ecological, emotional and sociopolitical history” of the older quarters of the city.
The 92-minute documentary, co-directed by Aman Mann and Teddy Leifer, has also been nominated for the prestigious BAFTA awards.
The Elephant Whisperers, by filmmaker Kartiki Gonsalves, depicts the caretakers of abandoned elephants in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state.
The mostly Tamil-language film follows Bomman and Bellie, members of an Indigenous tribe, treating two elephants Raghu and Ammu as their own children, “bringing to their jobs an intuitive understanding of the forest and its irreplaceable riches”, the film suggests.
“How on earth will Oscar voters find the strength to resist a documentary about two adorable baby elephants and their equally lovable elderly caretakers? Indeed, it will take a pachyderm’s hide – and a heart of stone – to ignore a 41-minute montage of ‘awwww’,” a piece in India’s Scroll.in website said.
We will know on March 12 when the Oscar awards ceremony will be held in Los Angeles.
A BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi that questions his leadership during the deadly riots in Gujarat in 2002 has been dismissed as “propaganda” by India’s foreign ministry.
When communal riots in Gujarat, a state in western India, left more than 1,000 people dead, the majority of them Muslims, Modi served as the state’s chief minister. After a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire and killed 59 people, violence broke out.
The report of a United Kingdom inquiry showcased in the documentary refers to the events as a “systematic campaign of violence” which has “all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing”, and places direct responsibility on Modi.
For me, the revelational and damaging part of the BBC documentary is former UK foreign secretary Jack Straw speaking on record for the first time about the finding of his own officials in Gujarat during the 2002 anti-muslim pogrom pic.twitter.com/i8asr4wA5h
The UK government report was never made public until it was revealed in the documentary.
According to the documentary, released on Tuesday, the inquiry team claimed that Modi had prevented the police from acting to stop violence targeted at Muslims and cited sources as saying Modi had specifically ordered authorities not to intervene.
Modi denied the accusations and was exonerated in 2012 following an inquiry by India’s top court. Another petition questioning his exoneration was dismissed last year.
Terming the BBC documentary a “propaganda piece” meant to push a “discredited narrative”, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said “bias”, “lack of objectivity” and “continuing colonial mindset” is “blatantly visible” in it.
“It makes us wonder about the purpose of this exercise and the agenda behind it, and we do not wish to dignify such efforts,” he told a news conference.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves to his supporters in Gujarat state [File: Amit Dave/Reuters]
The BBC, contacted for comment, said the documentary was “rigorously researched” and involved a “wide range” of voices and opinions, including responses from people in Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“We offered the Indian government a right to reply to the matters raised in the series – it declined to respond,” a BBC spokesperson said.
Ongoing discrimination
The documentary also features a former top UK diplomat as saying the violence had been planned by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) – an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist paramilitary organisation. Modi joined the RSS at a young age in his home state of Gujarat.
The VHP “could not have inflicted so much damage without the climate of impunity created by the state government”, the inquiry team said.
Jack Straw, who was the UK’s foreign secretary at the time of the violence, was also interviewed in the documentary and said allegations against Modi undermined his reputation.
“These were very serious claims – that Chief Minister Modi had played a pretty active part in pulling back the police and in tacitly encouraging the Hindu extremists,” Straw said. “That was a particularly egregious example.”
“What we did was establish an inquiry and have a team go to Gujarat and find out for themselves what had happened. And they produced a very thorough report,” he added.
The report also claimed there was widespread rape of Muslim women during the 2002 violence. It added that the riots’ objective was to “purge Muslims from Hindu areas” – something critics today say has become state policy under the BJP’s Hindu nationalist agenda.
Under Modi, whose party has been in power since 2014, Muslims in India have repeatedly been subjected to violence and lynchings as well as blatant discrimination, which is often politically motivated.
Hindu supremacist groups and supporters of the governing BJP have also intensified calls to turn the country into an exclusive Hindu state.
The systematic, state-sponsored discrimination against Muslims includes laws that ban the hijab, a headscarf worn by many Muslim women, in certain parts of the country. Other controversial laws passed over the years include the Citizenship Amendment Act, which grants nationality to non-Muslim minorities from neighbouring countries.
The UK inquiry, according to the BBC documentary, shows that “reconciliation will be impossible” as long as Modi remains in power.
Dozens of families were evacuated from Joshimath in India’s Uttarakhand state after large cracks appeared in their homes and on the roads.
The area has been designated as “disaster-prone,” according to a district official.
So far, over 600 houses have developed cracks as a result of gradual land subsidence, which refers to the ground gradually sinking.
Officials stated that dry ration supplies and financial assistance were being provided to affected families.
According to Himanshu Khurana, the magistrate of Chamoli district, where Joshimath is located, two federal government teams are on their way to the town to assess the situation.
Around 68 families have been moved so far to temporary shelters that have been set up in hotels and guest houses in safer areas. More people will be evacuated today and in the coming days, officials said.
Residents of Joshimath, which is situated in the ecologically fragile Himalayan region, had been raising the alarm for months, but the issue only got widespread media attention recently after the cracks began widening.
Last week, local officials stopped several construction projects after thousands of protesters blocked a national highway. The protesters blamed rampant construction for the crisis.
A team of experts visited Joshimath last week and submitted a report to the government. The report has not been made public yet, but The Times of India newspaper, which accessed a copy, reported that the panel had recommended that the houses that had sustained the “maximum damage” be demolished.
It also quoted an unnamed senior official saying that that at least 25% of the area of Joshimath seemed to be affected by land subsidence. The BBC has not independently confirmed this.
Image caption,Around 68 families have been moved to temporary shelters so far
The problem of subsidence goes back decades; in 1976, a government committee flagged the risks of land sinking in Joshimath after residents complained of cracks in their houses. In its report, the panel also warned against allowing heavy construction work in the area.
But in the decades since, construction activity has only shot up in Uttarakhand, which is situated in the ecologically fragile Himalayan region. The state is home to a number of revered Hindu shrines that draw millions of pilgrims every year.
Experts have said that the rampant construction is damaging the ecological balance of the region, which is vulnerable to earthquakes and landslides.
On Sunday, the Prime Minister’s Office said that federal agencies were working with the Uttarakhand government to deal with the situation and ensure the safety of residents.
A Hindu religious leader has also approached the Supreme Court, asking it to urgently intervene and declare the crisis in Joshimath a “national disaster.” The matter was mentioned in court on Monday, legal website LiveLaw reported, adding that the Chief Justice had asked for it to be brought up on Tuesday.
In October, the BBC’s Vineet Khare had visited Joshimath and spoke to several residents who were living in fear.
“We leave the house the moment it starts raining because we’re scared,” Sumedha Bhatt, who lives in Ravigram village, told him.
On that visit, the BBC found that many people had already begun leaving their houses as the cracks had started widening after heavy rains. Some families had also resorted to makeshift measures, such as using polyethylene sheets to prevent seepage and wooden planks to offer additional support to their houses.
An important Jain pilgrimage site has been closed totourism by the Indian government.
On top of the tallest mountain in Jharkhand state, Sammed Shikharji is situated in an area that is sensitive to the environment.
Alcohol consumption and the consumption of non-vegetarian food are examples of “defiling the site” activities that the government has asked the state to outlaw.
There are about 4.5 million members of the religious minority known as the Jain community.
Devout Jains follow the tenets of their religion under the spiritual guidance of monks. These include detailed prescriptions for daily life, especially what to eat, what not to eat and when to eat.
The community fears that tourism to the pilgrimage site in Jharkhand will harm the sanctity of the area.
Members have been protesting against the state government’s move to turn the site into a tourist spot for some weeks.
In 2019, the environment ministry had approved tourism activities at Parasnath Hill – where the site is located – following the state government’s proposal.
On Thursday, it sent a letter to the state government stating that the site was important not just for the community but the entire nation.
It asked the state to immediately stop all “tourism and eco-tourism” activities at the site and to enforce all rules applicable to eco-sensitive zones.
This includes banning “loud music, the sale and consumption of intoxicants, defiling sites of religious and cultural significance” and activities that can harm the ecology of the area.
Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav tweeted that the federal government was committed to “preserving and protecting the rights of the Jain community over all their religious sites, including Sammed Shikhar”.
The recent resignation of anchor and Modi critic Ravish Kumar underlines how monopolization is threatening Indian media.
When popular Indian television journalist Ravish Kumar announced his resignation from New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) — the country’s oldest private broadcaster — at the end of November, it was a grim reminder of the vanishing independent news media landscape in the world’s largest democracy.
It was no ordinary departure. Kumar had been a popular voice on NDTV for a quarter of a century and is known for his fearless, hard-hitting reporting and willingness to take on those in power. Of late he has criticised other news outlets for taking a stance explicitly in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and for stoking communal discord between Hindus and Muslims.
Yet Kumar felt compelled to quit after the world’s third-richest man, Gautam Adani, became the majority shareholder of NDTV. Adani is considered close to Modi, who used the tycoon’s aircraft for campaigning ahead of the 2014 national election. Since 2014, when Modi came to power, Adani’s wealth has jumped from $7bn to $110bn.
Adani has insisted that NDTV under his ownership will retain its independence to call out the government when it has “done something wrong”. But the worries about his takeover of one of the few Indian TV channels seen as brave enough to challenge the Modi government reflect broader fears centred on a question that journalism around the world has been grappling with: what happens when the ownership of platforms meant to protect free speech is concentrated in the hands of a few elite businesspeople?
Or as Kumar said: “How can a channel, bought by a corporat[ion] whose success is seen to be linked to contracts granted by the government, now criticise the government? It was clear to me I had to quit.”
A global problem
To be sure, this isn’t a problem unique to India.
Corporate monopolisation of media has increasingly been under scrutiny in the United States. In 2017, Bernie Sanders wrote of how Comcast, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS — just six companies — owned 90 percent of the media in the country. Forbes wrote in 2016 that 15 billionaires owned all major national newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
In the United Kingdom, the Media Reform Coalition has described “concentrated ownership” in the sector as a “significant problem for any modern democracy”. In 2015, 71 percent of the UK national newspaper market was dominated by three companies – News UK, Daily Mail Group and Reach. By 2019, their market share had grown to 83 percent, and by 2021, to 90 percent.
Some countries have regulatory measures in place to curb media monopolisation. In Germany, for instance, no single company can control “more than 30 percent of all TV audiences”.
But the landscape varies across Europe: In Italy, the holding company Fininvest, which is controlled by the family of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, owns all three of the country’s main TV channels as well as the nation’s largest publisher for newspapers and books.
Canary in the Indian media mine
India’s economic boom since the 1990s has spawned a fast-growing media industry, with a market size expected to grow from $21.5bn in 2021 to $54bn in 2026. This has resulted in a news media landscape that now boasts more than 100,000 newspapers and 380 news channels. Add the rapid growth of internet and social media usage, and a wide variety of news platforms ought to be available to the Indian consumer.
But like in the West, Indian media too is increasingly owned by a select few corporations. The first warning bells were sounded a decade ago when Reliance Industries – India’s largest company in terms of revenue – entered the media sector.
In 2011, the Indian parliament passed the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Amendment Bill that made “digitisation of cable television across the country mandatory in three years”. But as Arvind Rajagopal, professor of media studies at New York University pointed out at the time, the bill also effectively paved the way for concentrated corporate control of media since “the largest cable service providers [were] already owned by broadcasting companies”.
In January 2012, Reliance — headed by Mukesh Ambani, the world’s eighth-richest man — invested in the heavily debt-ridden Network18 media group. The result was the creation of India’s largest media conglomerate which included a bouquet of general news and business channels in English, Hindi and several regional languages. Journalists and analysts raised concerns over how this would impact the media coverage of a company, Reliance, whose decisions influence the nation’s economy. In 2014 Reliance took complete control of Network18 in a hostile takeover. Rajdeep Sardesai, the editor-in-chief of the company’s flagship channel CNN-IBN, resigned. In his farewell email, he wrote : “Editorial independence and integrity have been articles of faith in 26 years in journalism and maybe I am too old now to change!”.
Today, the ties between big business, politics and Indian media extend beyond any one company. Zee Media Corporation, another influential TV network, is part of the conglomerate Essel Group, which is led by Subhash Chandra, a former member of the upper house of the Indian parliament. His candidature was supported by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
A 2019 report by Reporters Without Borders found many other similar examples. Odisha TV is owned by the family of Baijayant Panda, who is the BJP’s national vice president and spokesperson. News Live, one of the most popular TV channels in India’s northeast, is owned by Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, wife of the BJP chief minister of the northeastern state of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma.
‘Godi media’
Ravish Kumar coined a term that captures this unholy mix of news, money and politics: Godi media. “Godi” means lap. Godi media refers to the lapdog nature of the many pro-establishment mouthpieces that the Modi years have birthed. And looking at how the mainstream Indian media has celebrated events like the BJP-led demolitions of the homes of Muslim activists or criticised farmer protests in 2021, it’s hard to get away from a sense that Kumar is spot on.
Meanwhile, amid a spate of attacks onjournalists and government critics, India is slipping in the World Press Freedom Index, where it is now ranked 150 among 180 nations.
It’s important to cling to the hope that the tide will turn. Yes, good journalism needs money. But it also needs freedom. If media monopolisation cuts out critical voices like Kumar’s, it can never be healthy for Indian democracy.
DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author’s, and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana
On Thursday, the Supreme Court of India will decide whether or not to order the eviction of thousands of residents of the northern state of Uttarakhand.
Residents are allegedly encroaching on Indian Railways’ land, according to government officials.
The Uttarakhand high court ordered the railways to clear the land in December after giving residents a week’s notice.
Residents, however, have complained that they have nowhere to go.
Media reports say around 50,000 people will be left homeless if theSupreme Court decides to uphold the high court’s order. They live in neighbourhoods situated on a 2km-strip (1.24 miles) of land near Uttarakhand’s Haldwani railway station.
On December 20, a two-judge bench of the high court had asked the railways to “use the forces to any extent determining upon need” to evict the “unauthorised occupants” after giving them a week’s notice.
The legal battle began after a public interest lawsuit on illegal mining in the area was filed in 2013 – later, the scope of the case was widened to include the alleged encroachments as well.
From January 1, the residents started getting eviction notices, the Indian Express newspaper reported.
Hundreds of people – including women and children – have been protesting for days against the order.
Some residents told The Times of India newspaper that they were being harassed without cause and asked how schools and hospitals could have operated in the area without permission.
“How can one deny the structures that were made during the British era? “The railroad has no documents to support its claim,” one man told the newspaper.
A senior official has said that the Indian Railways has “old maps, a 1959 notification, revenue records from 1971, and the results of” a 2017 survey to prove their claim.
The state’s chief minister has said that his government will follow whatever the Supreme Court decides.
Uttarakhand, a hilly state, is currently experiencing a cold wave, with the minimum temperature hovering around the 1C mark.
In its decision to fine Google, India’s competition watchdog “copied” parts of an EU ruling, Reuters reports.
The tech giant said this in a filing to an Indian appeals tribunal, the report said.
The tribunal will hear Google’s appeal against the penalty on Wednesday.
In October, the Indian regulator fined Google 13bn rupees ($157m; £131m) for using its Android platform to dominate the market.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) had accused Google of entering into “one-sided agreements” with smartphone makers to ensure the dominance of its apps.
Reuters reported that according to the filing made to the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), Google said that the CCI’s investigations unit deployed “evidence from Europe that was not examined in India”. It has also said that there were “more than 50 instances of copy-pasting” from the European Commission’s ruling.
Reuters said it had reviewed the filing, which has not been made public.
The CCI did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters. The BBC has also contacted CCI representatives for a response.
While announcing the fine on 20 October, the CCI had said that Google was “abusing” the licensing of its Android operating system for a range of smartphones, web searches, browsing and video hosting services.
It said that Google was entering into forced agreements with players in the space to ensure that its bouquet of apps – such as Google Chrome, YouTube, Google Maps and others – were used. This, the CCI said, was stifling competition and gave Google continuous access to consumer data and lucrative advertising opportunities.
Google is facing a series of anti-trust cases in India and authorities are also probing its conduct in the smart TV market and its in-app payments system.
The Android-related inquiry was started in 2019, following complaints by consumers of Android smartphones.
The case is similar to the one Google faced in Europe, where regulators in 2018 imposed a record fine on the company for using the Android platform to cement its search engine’s dominance. In September last year, Google lost an appeal it had filed in court against the order.
Days after the 20 October order, the CCI imposed another fine on Google for anti-competitive practices. Google has appealed against this as well.
Nearly four years after filing a case of criminal conspiracy andfraud against him, Venugopal Dhoot, one of India’s most well-known business tycoons, was arrested earlier this week.
His arrest followed the detention of Chanda Kochhar, the former head of ICICI Bank, and her husband Deepak for an alleged fraud in which it is alleged that in 2009, Kochhar approved high-value loans to Dhoot’s company in exchange for investments in her husband’s renewable energy company.
The third-largest lender in India is ICICI, and Kochhar, its legendary CEO, served as a role model for female bankers.
Kochhar and her husband have denied allegations of quid pro quo, saying the investment from Dhoot’s company was a genuine one.
These arrests mark a crucial turning point in a case that has seen its first arrests since the alleged offences were recorded by investigators in January 2019.
According to local media reports, Dhoot, who has been denying the allegations, has offered to turn approver (give evidence).
“This could open a Pandora’s box,” Arvind Gupta, an ICICI shareholder who blew the whistle on the alleged scam in 2016, told the BBC.
“The investigation is a start in the right direction, but its scope needs to be widened since Kochhar wasn’t the only person on the ICICI credit committee that approved the loan,” Mr Gupta said.
He added that the complexity of the alleged fraud would require inter-departmental coordination between all of India’s investigative agencies to get to the bottom of the case.
The rise of Venugopal Dhoot
Through the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, Venugopal Dhoot was a ubiquitous presence at industry events, corporate soirees and budget consultations.
He was a darling of business journalists because of his accessibility and willingness to give a quick byte or quote, and his views were much sought after.
Born in an agrarian family that had the licence to distribute Bajaj scooters in Aurangabad city and other parts of the western state of Maharashtra, Dhoot was instrumental in Videocon’s spectacular transformation into a consumer goods firm by the 1990s.
The company was among the first to introduce colour television sets in India and gradually expanded into manufacturing other consumer appliances such as washing machines, air conditioners and refrigerators, earning Dhoot the moniker “king” of India’s white goods market.
Image caption,Dhoot was instrumental in Videocon’s spectacular transformation into a consumer goods firm by the 1990s
Dhoot came from a small town and initially struggled with speaking English ,but that didn’t get in the way of him building good relationships with politicians and other businessmen.
Until the 1990s, he reaped the benefits of sky-high import duties on global firms, which made it hard for those brands to compete with Videocon, according to Arvind Singhal, chairman of retail consultancy Technopak Advisors.
But an aggressive branding and distribution strategy was also a key reason why it outlasted other homegrown brands in the market for nearly two decades.
“They roped in cricketers and film stars and invested in a pan-India network of distribution and service stores,” Mr Singhal says. “They were number one in the market, and then a respectable number two and number three right until 2008-09.”
The downfall
It was the combination of intense competition from South Korean brands such as Samsung and LG, and Videocon’s unnecessary diversification into “fantasies” such as oil and gas and telecom at a time when they should’ve been protecting their core turf, that precipitated Dhoot’s downfall, Mr Singhal says.
After winning spectrum to launch commercial operations, Videocon Telecommunications was among the companies that saw their licences being cancelled following the 2G spectrum scam – relating to alleged irregularities in the selling of telecom spectrum licences.
It won the licence back in some states, but eventually wound down operations after selling the spectrum to Bharti Airtel.
Dhoot’s ambition of metamorphosing into an oil and gas giant didn’t materialise either. His insurance business met a similar fate.
By 2012, Videocon was one among a list of other highly indebted firms – including the Essar Group, GVK, GMR, and Reliance ADAG – that Credit Suisse’s House of Debt report said posed a “concentration risk” to Indian banks.
The aggregate debt of these 10 groups was equal to 13% of bank loans and 98% of the banking system’s net worth.
Image caption,Dhoot was once a ubiquitous presence at industry events, corporate soirees and budget consultations
A review of the situation three years later by Credit Suisse found that that despite attempts by groups like Videocon and GMR to reduce debt through asset sales, their financial stress had “intensified further”, with Dhoot’s company seeing among the largest increase in debt levels.
By 2018, India’s bankruptcy court had initiated insolvency proceedings against Videocon. In under a year, Dhoot was also battling federal investigations into the ICICI Bank loan, for which he is in custody.
The endgame
As a probe begins into the alleged wrongdoings, ICICI Bank remains a resilient force, and barring Kochhar, seems to have put the crisis behind itself and moved on.
But for Dhoot, a comeback to the pole position he once commanded will be a tall order.
His meteoric success, and dramatic downfall, are in many ways no different from a number of other Indian industrialists who through the 2000s diversified through borrowings, says Amit Tandon, founder and managing director of IiAS, an institutional advisory.
“Diffused focus and macro-economic headwinds hit many who either lost theirbusinesses or are a pale shadow of themselves.”
According to a long-standing agreement between the two nuclear-armed rivals, Pakistan claims to have sent the Indian embassy in Islamabad a list of its nuclear installations and facilities.
In a statement released on Sunday, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said that India had simultaneously given a list to the Pakistani embassy in New Delhi.
It stated that lists are traded yearly on January 1. Since 1992, the custom has been in place.
The neighbours have fought three wars and have had a number of military skirmishes in recent years. Last year an Indian missile accidentally landed in Pakistan, setting off alarm bells across the world.
“The list of nuclear installations and facilities in Pakistan was officially handed over to a representative of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs today [Sunday],” Pakistan’s foreign office said.
The annual exchanges come at a time diplomatic ties between the two are near non-existent.
India’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters news agency’s request for comment.
Pakistan first officially tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and has since developed a significant stockpile of nuclear capable missiles, as has India.
With the help of China, Pakistan has recently increased its use of nuclear energy to meet the rising demand for electricity.
In a separate statement, Pakistan’s foreign office said the two countries had also exchanged a list of each other’s citizens held in prisons.
The list included 705 Indian prisoners imprisoned in Pakistan, including 51 civilians and 654 fishermen, the statement said.
It added that the Indian government also shared with the Pakistani mission in New Delhi a list of 434 Pakistani prisoners in India, including 339 civilians and 95 fishermen.
Pakistan has requested the early release and repatriation of 51 of its civilian prisoners and 94 fishermen who have completed their sentences. A request for special consular access to 56 civil prisoners has also been made.
Fishermen from each country are often arrested when they stray into the other’s waters.
A parliamentary committee in The Gambia has recommended legal action against the Indian company that makes cough syrups, which is thought to be responsible for at least 70 child fatalities there.
For exporting what it called tainted drugs, it claimed Maiden Pharmaceuticals should be held liable.
In October, the WHO issued a warning urging authorities to halt the sale of the syrups.
Government labs in India said their tests on the syrups found that they were “complying with specifications”. An Indian official said last week that the WHO was “presumptuous” in blaming the syrups.
But the global health body told the BBC it was only following its mandate and “stands by the action taken”.
After weeks of investigation, the Gambian parliamentary committee has now recommended that authorities should take tough measures, including banning all Maiden Pharmaceuticals products in the country and taking legal action against the firm.
The committee said it “is convinced that Maiden Pharmaceuticals [is] culpable and should be held accountable for exporting the contaminated medicines”.
“The findings remain the same with the previous reports which indicates that Promethazine Oral Solution, Kofexmalin Baby Cough Syrup, Makoff Baby Cough Syrup and Magrip N Cold Syrup were contaminated with diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol,” the parliamentary committee said in its report.
Diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol are toxic to humans and could be fatal if consumed. But the panel added that the exact scientific cause of the children’s deaths was still under investigation.
The committee also wanted the country’s Medicine Control Agency to ensure all medicines imported into the country are properly registered and background checks conducted on manufacturers – including visiting their facilities.
The report also revealed inadequacies in the country’s healthcare system urging the government to strengthen it and provide better equipment and medicines to the country’s hospitals.
What happened?
In late July, The Gambia detected an increase in cases of acute kidney injury among children under the age of five. The government later said around 69 children had died from these injuries.
The WHO then identified four of the Maiden Pharmaceuticals’ medicines as potentially linked to the deaths of the Gambian children and issued a global alert.
After the news broke in October, India said that it was investigating the products and ordered Maiden Pharmaceuticals to stop production at its main factory in the northern state of Haryana.
On 13 December, Dr VG Somani, India’s drugs controller general, wrote a letter to the WHO saying that the samples it tested at a government laboratory “were found not to have been contaminated” with the compounds.
“As per the test reports received from [the] government laboratory, all the control samples of the four products have been found to be complying with specifications,” he added.
The test results are being further examined by a panel of Indian experts.
A senior adviser to India’s information and broadcasting ministry told the BBC last week that the WHO had been “presumptuous” in blaming the cough syrups for the deaths of the children.
“Subsequent inspections, tests and studies by Government of India’s notified bodies and technical team have shown that WHO’s presumptuous statement was untrue and incorrect,” said Kanchan Gupta, adding that the health body had “[jumped] the gun without valid scientific reasons”.
India produces a third of the world’s medicines, mostly in the form of generic drugs.
Home to some of the fastest growing pharmaceutical companies, the country is known as the “world’s pharmacy” and meets much of the medical needs of African nations.
On social media, an Indian woman who needed assistance feeding her kids received millions of rupees in donations from complete strangers.
After her husband passed away, Subhadra, 46, a resident of the southern state of Kerala, had asked her son’s teacher for 500 rupees ($6; £5) to buy food.
The teacher launched a crowdfunding campaign on social media after being moved by her condition.
The family had 5.5 million rupees in donations by Sunday.
Subhadra, who goes by one name, had been having financial difficulties ever since her husband passed away in August.
Because the youngest of her three sons has cerebral palsy and needs constant care, she was unable to look for work.
She couldn’t look for a job as the youngest of her three sons has cerebral palsy and requires constant care.
On Friday, she reached out to Girija Harikumar, a teacher at the local school where her middle child studies, for help as her children had nothing to eat.
Ms Harikumar, a Hindi language teacher, told the BBC that she had asked the student, Abhishek, to tell her if his family was facing problems after his father’s death. This was the first time the boy or his mother had asked for help.
“I gave her 1,000 rupees and told her I will do something,” Ms Harikumar says.
She then visited the family and saw that they were living in grinding poverty.
“There was just a handful of grains in the kitchen and the children had nothing to eat,” Ms Harikumar says.
“I thought there was no point giving Subhadra small amounts of money now and then as it would be totally inadequate for the family,” she adds.
On Friday evening, Ms Harikumar wrote a post on Facebook about the family’s plight and asked people to help by sending any money they could afford. She also shared Subhadra’s bank account details in the post, so that the money could be directly transferred to her.
The post went viral and by Monday,Subhadra has received 5.5m rupees from kind strangers.
Some of the money will be used to finish a house that Subhadra’s husband began building before he died. The rest will be deposited in the bank for their expenses.
The country has increased troop deployment along a contentious border with China to an unprecedented level, according to India’s foreign minister.
S. Jaishankar continued by saying that India wouldn’t permit China to “unilaterally change” the current situation at the border.
Days prior to his remarks, Chinese and Indian forces engaged in combat in a flashpoint region along the border in the state of Arunachal Pradesh.
According to India, Chinese troops’ “encroachment” was the reason why the conflict started.
China’s foreign ministry has said that according to their knowledge, the situation on the border was “generally stable” and the two sides were maintaining dialogue on the issue.
India and China share a disputed 3,440km (2,100 mile) long de facto border – called the Line of Actual Control, or LAC – which is poorly demarcated. Soldiers on either side come face to face at many points, and tensions sometimes escalate into skirmishes or clashes.
Both sides have been trying to de-escalate since a violent brawl in June 2020 in the Galwan Valley in the Ladakh region much further to the west – 20 Indian soldiers and at least four Chinese soldiers died in the battle.
The latest flare-up – the first in more than a year – occurred on 9 December, and resulted in minor injuries to a few soldiers. Both sides immediately disengaged from the area, the Indian army said.
Mr Jaishankar was answering questions about the incident while speaking at an event organised by media company India Today on Monday.
“Today, you have a deployment of the Indian Army on China border that we never had. It is done to counter Chinese aggression. The Indian Army today is deployed to counter any attempt to unilaterally change LAC,” he said.
China hasn’t responded to the comments yet.
The latest clash had led to a political uproar in India last week, with opposition parties walking out of parliament after their demand for an immediate discussion of the border situation was denied.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of India’s main opposition Congress party,has accused the government of ignoring the threat from China, and alleged that the country’s forces were “thrashing” Indian soldiers at the border.
Speaking in parliament on Monday, Mr Jaishankar said that Mr Gandhi’s words “disrespected” Indian soldiers and denied that the government was indifferent to the situation.
“If we were indifferent to China, who sent the Indian Army to the border? If we were indifferent to China, why are we pressurising China for de-escalation and disengagement today?” he said.
On any given night at the Century Restaurant, an Indian eatery in Doha, customers may find themselves drawn into a discussion about football with a waiter named Abbas Koori.
The buzzing eatery where the 46-year-old Indian waiter works is a place for people on the move. The no-frills establishment serves Keralan cuisine, along with a few Chinese and Middle Eastern dishes. It caters to a diverse group of foreigners in the bustling neighbourhood of Najma, which is filled with furniture, hardware, scrap, and meat businesses.
Koori is a familiar face at the restaurant and is known by regulars to be a football aficionado.
These days, with the World Cup in full swing in Qatar, Koori has more opportunities than usual to discuss his favourite topic.
“I speak to every African and European I meet at the restaurant. I ask them where they come from,” said Koori, who has met fans from Ghana, England, Nigeria, Morocco and other countries.
“Then I ask about a player in their national team. Most people start to speak.”
One recent evening, a group of Moroccans came to the restaurant, and while serving them Koori started listing the names of past and present players from their national team. “Hakim Ziyech, Achraf Hakimi, Marouane Chamakh, Noussair Mazraoui, Mustapha Hadji … They were delighted when they heard those names and called me akhi [brother],” he recounted.
Other times, the friendly yet straight-faced Koori strikes up a conversation by asking, “Have you watched yesterday’s game?”
In mid-November, some Chelsea fans who were in Qatar for the World Cup asked to take a selfie with Koori after he introduced himself as a Premier League fan.
“No one ignored or avoided me for talking football,” he said.
Memorising players’ names
The moustachioed waiter dons a hairnet and the restaurant’s brown polo shirt with red trim during his 12-hour shift from noon to midnight.
He prefers serving groups as he has more occasions to return to their table and extend the conversation, which he peppers with historical anecdotes, analysis of team formation, occasional updates about players’ fitness and football folklore including rags-to-riches stories. While doing this, he occasionally glances at the cash register to see whether the manager is watching him and if he needs to hurry back to work.
At night after his shift, he watches matches or replays and memorises the names of players. “If I don’t get enough time, I rifle through the highlights on YouTube,” said Koori.
NS Nissar, an Indian sportswriter covering the World Cup 2022 for Madhyamam, a Malayalam language newspaper from the Indian state of Kerala, first encountered Koori just before the World Cup started when he went to the restaurant for tea. He suggested that Koori may know the names of thousands of players from the past three decades.
“I instantly noticed his memory. We all know Claudio Caniggia played for Argentina in the 1990s, but Koori tracked the players’ entire trajectory through clubs. He can recall every player of [all] World Cup teams since the 1990s,” recounted Nissar, who described Koori’s memory as “encyclopaedic”.
“I have seen people knowledgeable about Brazil, Argentina or Italy, but this man knows a lot about Morocco, Cameroon or Senegal,” he said.
Sometimes, Koori will spontaneously mention the nicknames of players who were likened to the Brazilian legend Pele: “Pele of the desert – Saudi Arabia’s Majed Abdullah; White Pele – Zico of Brazil.” At other times he shares trivia like how “Ballon d’Or winner George Weah went on to become Liberia’s president.”
He might tell you how AC Milan, who dominated the Italian league, fell from grace as they focused “too much on defence” or lament that the days of “individuals single-handedly carrying a team to win” have passed.
Koori never leaves a patron who he thinks follows the game, says Jaseem Mohamed, a sales engineer who occasionally drops by the restaurant for a quick bite during the week. “He always hovers around the table, looking to open a chat,” he said. “I encourage it when I have time.”
Koori poses with a regular customer from Ghana with whom he discusses football [Firoz Hassan/Al Jazeera]
‘The reason I love football’
Koori was born in 1976 – the youngest of six children – to a gunny bag merchant and a homemaker in Kerala’s Malappuram, a football-mad town in a country where cricket is often the more popular sport.
Koori didn’t play the game much in his childhood, but a 1990 World Cup match that he watched with about 30 others from his village sparked his lifelong love of the sport. Sitting in his neighbour’s courtyard as a 14-year-old in front of a “black and white Keltron brand TV”, he witnessed a historic match where Cameroon defeated Argentina.
“Argentina was a good team, but the powerful Cameroonians tackled every Argentine player, including Diego Maradona, Caniggia, and Jorge Burruchaga,” he explained.
Although Argentina lost that game, Maradona enthralled a teenage Koori. “He was the reason I love football. Maradona’s passing, dribbling, and arrival to the pitch carrying a ball on his head … he had that flare for the dramatic,” he added.
After finishing high school, Koori worked in an auto garage and then in sand mining. Throughout, he read about football in the sports pages of newspapers. Koori, whose first language is Malayalam, taught himself to read English using Sportstar, an English-language Indian sports magazine.
“It was easy because I was familiar with the sports terms or had watched the game,” he said, adding that he doesn’t read about any other subjects in English.
Meanwhile, following the Premier League made him a Manchester United fan, while he also became an admirer of the Brazilian national team and some African players, especially ones from Cameroon and Nigeria.
“I love African footballers because of their dexterity,” Koori said, using the Malayalam word meyvazhakkam, which means flexibility, “and their dancing skills on the pitch in celebration.”
After he married, Koori moved to Saudi Arabia in search of better job prospects like thousands of others from his home district who have migrated to Gulf countries for work. He lived there from 2005 to 2008, working in a supermarket and a shawarma outlet in Khamis Mushait, a city some 900km (560 miles) from the capital Riyadh.
Then, after returning home, he worked again in sand mining before coming to Qatar in 2017.
The Qatar World Cup
Koori says the men in his family including his three brothers are also football fans. “My mother doesn’t watch. But my wife does,” he said.
Years of watching major European leagues have given him the knowledge to analyse the national teams playing in this World Cup.
“Watching Álisson Becker play for Liverpool, Ederson for Manchester City, Antony and Casemiro for Manchester United, Richarlison for Tottenham Hotspur, Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus for Arsenal, Neymar Junior and Marquinhos for PSG, Thiago Silva for Chelsea, I know the value of Brazil,” he reflected at the start of the tournament.
On Friday, his favourite team Brazil lost to Croatia. He now predicts a final between Argentina and France. “Croatia is not a good team,” he said matter-of-factly.
When the tournament began, Koori was sad to not be able to afford a ticket, which would cost a fifth of his monthly salary. But in late November, a regular customer gave him a ticket to watch Argentina face Poland, fulfilling Koori’s dream of attending a World Cup match. On his way to the game in the metro and in the stadium, he took selfies to record the experience.
He doesn’t know his benefactor’s name or where he works. “I didn’t ask,” said Koori. “I know he’s from Mangalore, in the Karnataka state of India, and he loves me for my football love.”
Koori’s wife and three children, who he misses and can only see once a year, also share his enthusiasm for the sport.
He would like someday to work in a football-related job in a club or association. As for his current job, he likes it “50-50”. But he appreciates that it has allowed him to share his love of the beautiful game with strangers. “I’m sure I motivated people to love football,” he said.
DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author’s, and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana
Afghan women wait to receive food in Kabul. Millions in the country suffer from acute food insecurity. © Reuters
