Report - Newslaundry

Why are students in Jharkhand angry? JPSC-JSSC protest enters 14th day

Anmol Pritam — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 14:32:17 GMT

Protesters allege that the movement unfolding in Ranchi is not receiving the level of mainstream media attention it warrants.

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The protest by students in Jharkhand, who are alleging irregularities in recruitment examinations, is growing by the day.

Launched on July 25 from Ranchi’s Jaipal Singh Munda Stadium under the banner of the ‘JPSC-JSSC Reforms Manch’, the protest entered its 14th day on Friday. Meanwhile, political pressure on the Hemant Soren government continues to mount.

The immediate trigger for the protest was the results of the 14th Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) Civil Services Preliminary Examination released on July 5. Protesters have alleged large-scale irregularities in the examination and selection process. They are demanding the cancellation of the exam and calling for a probe by the CBI or the formation of a committee comprising retired High Court judges from outside Jharkhand to investigate the matter.

Since its inception, however, the movement has expanded beyond grievances related to a single exam’s results to demand comprehensive and structural reforms within the JPSC and the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC).

As many as six protesters have embarked on an indefinite hunger strike. Earlier today, one of the hunger strikers, Rahul Kranti, who has been on a fast since August 4, was taken in an ambulance after his health deteriorated, according to PTI.

Questions are also being raised about the mainstream media’s coverage of this protest in Jharkhand. Protesters allege that the movement unfolding in Ranchi is not receiving the level of attention it warrants.

A notable aspect of this protest is that a majority of the protesters are those who have completed their undergraduate studies and are preparing for recruitment exams for government jobs. In contrast, many of the protesters seen in recent demonstrations at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar were relatively younger.

What is the ground reality in Ranchi? What demands have kept the student protesters steadfast for 14 days, and what response have they received from the government so far?

Watch our report.

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Jharkhand paper leak protest: Student leader says hunger strike still on, no stepping back

TNM investigation on ONGC funds to Sangh-linked orgs mentioned in JPC on Corporate Laws Bill

Sachi Hegde — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:47:39 GMT

TNM’s investigation, which showed how ONGC gave 14.7 percent of its CSR donations to RSS-linked organisations over 10 years, was referred before the Joint Parliamentary Committee to highlight the need for accountability in CSR expenditure.

LS Speaker Om Birla with JPC Members on the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026. (Image courtesy X/@LokSabhaSectt)

The News Minute’s investigation that exposed how 14.7 percent of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) was given to organisations linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was mentioned in front of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026.

As the committee discussed increasing the threshold of CSR funding that requires independent oversight, certain members cited TNM’s investigation, to highlight the need for auditing CSR funding and having independent directors on the CSR committee.

The Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, proposes key changes to the CSR rules under the Companies Act, 2013, purportedly to reduce “compliance burden.” However, some members argued against reducing accountability for CSR expenditure, as it could result in misuse of funds.

TNM reported in July that the ONGC, a state-owned company and one of India's largest public sector undertakings, gave Rs 668.01 crore of CSR funds to 20 registered organisations linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) over 10 years.

This was roughly 14.7 percent of the Rs 4,531 crore it disbursed to more than 2,000 organisations between 2015 and 2025. Nine of the 20 organisations are directly affiliated to the Sangh, nine were started by or are led by people with RSS ties, and two have worked with RSS.

After deliberations, the JPC on the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, endorsed amendments that will take an estimated 11,204 companies out of India's mandatory CSR regime, and allow thousands more to spend CSR money without an independent director checking where it goes.

The estimate comes from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which gave it to the committee when asked what the change would cost. Those 11,204 companies would have been required to spend about Rs 1,281.67 crore on CSR in 2025-26. Under the amended law, they will not have to spend any of it.

The Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026 rewrites the Companies Act, 2013 and the Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008. It was introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 23 and referred the same day to a 31-member JPC, chaired by BJP MP Sudheer Gupta. The panel took 130 written submissions and heard 83 stakeholders across 24 sittings before presenting its report to Parliament on August 3.

Two of its members – Menaka Guruswamy and Varun Chaudhry – filed notes of dissent. One of them has asked for the CSR clause to be struck out of the Bill entirely.

The existing law

CSR spending is presently mandatory in India under Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, for companies with a net worth of over Rs 500 crore, a turnover of over Rs 1,000 crore, or a net profit of over Rs 5 crore.

Such companies must spend at least 2 percent of average net profits from the previous three years on CSR. They must set up a CSR committee of its board, with at least one independent director, to decide what gets funded.

When the CSR outlay is Rs 50 lakh or less, the board itself takes on the CSR committee's functions, while also deciding who gets the funds.

What Clause 43 changes for CSR

Under clause 43 of the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, the minimum net profit to fall under CSR is raised from Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 crore. This is what takes the 11,204 companies out of the regime. The CSR outlay threshold, below which no CSR committee is required, is increased from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore.

The JPC in its report said that revising the CSR threshold would allow many small and medium companies to devote more resources towards business expansion and operational efficiency, while ensuring that the CSR framework stays focused on companies with relatively greater financial capacity.

However, it objected to the proposed sweeping power to exempt "such class or classes of companies as may be prescribed", saying it was “broad and lacks statutory guidance, thereby amounting to excessive delegation of legislative power.” The JPC recommended omitting the words "as may be prescribed".

In the Bill, the CSR committee threshold still reads "one crore rupees or such higher amount as may be prescribed".

Parliament therefore sets the figure that determines which companies must spend on CSR. The figure that determines which of them answer to an independent director can still be raised by government notification. The government also retains the power to remove entire categories of companies from the section.

The dissenting MPs

Varun Chaudhry, a Congress MP from Ambala, and Menaka Guruswamy, a nominated Rajya Sabha member and senior advocate, filed the two notes of dissent, both dated July 31, the day the report was adopted.

Chaudhry's note attributes to stakeholders who deposed before the panel - that through these amendments, "ease of doing business may not lead to ease of doing fraud".

He asks for Clause 43 pertaining to CSR to be entirely dropped.

Menaka Guruswamy objected that the Bill removes a check without substituting another. Raising the threshold "without introducing any monitoring mechanism reduces accountability for CSR expenditure", she writes.

Companies that no longer need a CSR committee "will continue to spend significant amounts under CSR, yet the Bill does not provide any independent mechanism to ensure that these funds reach the intended beneficiaries or are used for genuine public welfare", she said.

Supervision, she wrote, was needed "to prevent CSR funds from being used in a manner that secures quid pro quos or regulatory advantages for the contributing companies".

She also objected to the threshold remaining alterable.

On oversight, she wrote that the CSR committee "should be made answerable to an independent body that periodically reviews whether CSR funds have been utilised for the purposes intended under the Companies Act".

Menaka also noted that the Bill "delegates in more than sixty distinct places" and "leaves a very large part of the operative content to be filled in later by the executive".

Among her examples was a new Section 139(12), which would allow the government to exempt unnamed classes of companies from appointing an auditor. "Nothing in the Act," she wrote, "constrains the Central Government from exempting every company in the country from a statutory audit."

The JPC amended that clause. It found that extending the exemption to all companies "may have unintended implications for transparency and stakeholder protection", and confined it to private companies, so that public companies remain subject to statutory audit.

Concerns raised before JPC

The possibility of CSR money being misdirected was raised before the JPC before the clause was cleared. Members noted that CSR funds "may be directed towards Government-identified projects or misused for the personal or familial interests of company promoters", and asked for independent monitoring mechanisms.

The Corporate Affairs Secretary replied that an FAQ already bars CSR from being used to fill gaps in government spending and that this would be written into the rules, pointing to the disclosures companies already make - the board report, the CSR policy, certification in the auditor's report, and third-party impact evaluation for larger projects.

The JPC then accepted the higher CSR committee threshold as proposed.

What the ONGC case shows

During the years when TNM found substantial donations to RSS-associated organisations, ONGC's board included several office-bearers of the ruling party. From 2021 to 2026, its CSR committee was headed by Reena Jaitly, an independent director on the ONGC board who was president of the BJP's Punjab State Mahila Morcha when she was appointed.

Another BJP leader, Syam Chand Ghosh, was appointed an independent director in late 2021. In 2017, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra was made a non-official director, an appointment challenged in the Delhi High Court.

ONGC spends far too much on CSR to fall below any of the revised thresholds, and remains covered by Section 135 regardless of the Bill. Its record is relevant for what it shows about the safeguard itself. The CSR committee, and the independent director on it, are the only stage at which the choice of beneficiary is examined by someone other than those making it.

Under the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, companies spending up to Rs 1 crore a year will not have that oversight committee at all. Their directors will select the recipients and approve the payments, with no independent director required to examine the choice, and no checks to prevent CSR money from going to organisations those directors are politically or ideologically aligned with. The government will also be able to raise the Rs 1 crore ceiling further by notification, without returning to Parliament.

The spending itself will remain on the public record. Companies must still report their CSR outlays in their board reports.

The Bill now returns to Parliament, where it will be taken up with the JPC’s recommendations.

This report was republished from The News Minute as part of The News Minute-Newslaundry alliance. Read about our partnership here and become a subscriber here.

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Smokescreens, sneakers, and mass-reporting: Balen’s online machine against Nepal’s press

Dikshya Koirala — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 11:08:30 GMT

Part 2 of this two-part series explores a weaponised online ecosystem of Facebook groups, AI abuse, and narrative spins that keeps Balendra Shah’s administration largely immune to scrutiny.

Nepal Prime Minister Balendra Shah's asset disclosure, filed after his appointment in accordance with Section 50 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 2002, listed social media — not his government salary — as his primary source of income.

Shah declared bank deposits of 14.6 million Nepali rupees (INR 91 lakh) and stated that a significant portion of his income is generated through social media, from his over 4 million Facebook followers, approximately 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, and nearly 500,000 followers on X.

The disclosure raises an unusual conflict: Nepal’s sitting prime minister is being paid by the same platforms he uses to communicate government policy directly to the public.

As Part 1 of this two-part series on Nepal’s press freedom crisis has documented, the Shah administration has enforced a strict institutional blackout on journalists: no press conferences, restricted access to ministries, and an economic blockade against mainstream media.

Alongside this official blackout is a less visible system of control: a vast digital ecosystem used for trolling and targeted harassment. At its centre are prominent social media pages with close ties to Shah’s inner circle.

The algorithmic shield and the inner circle

Most members of Shah’s cabinet are also highly active on social media, often using personal accounts rather than official government channels to communicate with the public. Analysts, politicians and civil society leaders see this as a deliberate strategy to divert attention from pressing national issues.

“The government is using social media strategically to create a positive image of themselves,” says Ujjawal Achary, a researcher at the Kathmandu-based Centre for Media Research Nepal.

This image management was on full display in the first week of May 2026, when Nepal’s Supreme Court stayed three major decisions taken by the Shah government: banning student unions at universities, abolishing civil servants’ trade unions, and forcibly evicting squatter settlements along Kathmandu’s rivers.

On May 9, amidst the legal setback, a photo of Shah sitting casually went viral. Instead of discussing the setback his administration had suffered, the internet in Nepal spent the week debating his outfit and the price of his sneakers.

In a May 2026 report, Mani Dahal, special correspondent with Nepal News and a member of its investigative unit, documented how social media accounts run by Shah and his associates played a key role in his electoral victories. Together, Dahal wrote, these accounts provided Shah with a powerful political base.

Many of Shah’s closest advisors are directly connected to influential social media pages. Kumar Byanjankar, Shah’s Chief Political Advisor popularly known as 'Kumar Ben', is the founder of Troll Nepal, boasting about 638,000 followers on his Facebook profile.

Victor Poudel, founder of Routine of Nepal Banda (RONB), which commands about 5.1 million followers on Facebook and 1.6 million on TikTok, has also been closely associated with Shah and his government. The page frequently posts in favour of Shah's work, and critics attribute his victory in the Kathmandu mayoral elections largely to the popularity of RONB.

Sudhanshu Dahal, a professor of media studies at Kathmandu University, says in this Kathmandu Post article that the relationship between RONB and Shah is an “open secret”.

Speaking to Newslaundry, Dahal noted that RONB, which is also a registered media organisation, has a commercial incentive to maximise engagement. It is, he claimed, “the highest bidding Facebook page” for sponsored content, meaning stories that perform well – including ones favourable to Shah – are also directly profitable for the page.

This dynamic was documented as far back as Shah’s mayoral tenure. A January 2026 Kathmandu Post report by Gaurav Pokharel and Lekhnath Pant noted that Shah rarely engaged traditional media, preferring Facebook posts that sometimes sparked controversy – several of which were reposted verbatim on pages like RONB, multiplying his reach.

Coverage of Shah on RONB was, at times, consistent enough that rival politicians accused the page of favouritism. Poudel did not dispute this.

“We used to post about every candidate and political party, but those on Balen always got us the most user engagement,” he told the Post.

This relationship has repeatedly been leveraged to control damage during controversies. Back in 2023, Shah controversially posted that he would burn down Singha Durbar after the police stopped his vehicle during a routine check of government vehicles on a public holiday. Singha Durbar is the historical palace serving as the political and administrative centre of the Nepal government.

Immediately after the post triggered severe backlash, RONB came to Shah’s defence, distorting the controversy. It posted a picture of Shah and his wife with a caption implying they had just become parents to a baby girl to turn the narrative back in Shah’s favour. However, the independent news outlet Setopati later reported that Shah’s wife had actually given birth a week earlier, exposing the post as a coordinated narrative pivot.

Newslaundry’s own review of RONB’s Facebook activity found at least 10 such coordinated posts since Shah became prime minister, suggesting this pattern has persisted. On July 21, for example, Shah posted about the government’s decision to scrap a 3 percent health and education tax; ten minutes later, an identical post appeared on RONB tagged with the hashtag #news. A similar pattern followed on June 20, when Shah posted an itinerary for the Makalu Base Camp trek, which RONB reposted the same day with credit to Shah.

RONB’s coverage of Shah has also taken on a celebratory, at times overtly promotional, tone, whether it’s a birthday post, a post marking his swearing-in as prime minister, or a post of Shah wearing the Nepali footwear brand Goldstar that reads closer to product promotion than political coverage. The page’s editorial choices have also drawn scrutiny.

Earlier last month, RONB posted a photograph of Home Minister Sudan Gurung visiting Ganesh Nepali in hospital after his self-immolation. This post was criticised in the comments for highlighting Gurung’s visit rather than the incident itself.

Sudhanshu Dahal argued that Shah has cultivated a quasi-cult image. The black cap and sunglasses have become instantly recognisable symbols, with lookalikes appearing across Nepal. “That cult aspiration is there, and it's very strong,” he said, though he also noted, “Social media is just a bubble... most of the time these bubbles burst.”

Indications that this bubble was bursting were visible after communal clashes recently broke out in southeastern Nepal, killing at least three people and injuring 25, in a dispute that arose over a religious flag and loud music played during a Hindu event. On July 30, Shah posted a statement on Facebook condemning the violence. Four days after that, he delivered his first national address from the Prime Minister’s Office since taking office.

The response to his own post and RONB’s coverage of the address was unusually critical. Commenters mocked his alleged reliance on a scripted speech and his decision to remove his trademark sunglasses for the broadcast.

“Finally without the silly looking sunglasses,” read one comment on RONB’s page.

Others pushed back on the substance of his response.

“The public does not expect empty appeals from the government, but rather timely security, fair handling, and responsible leadership,” one commenter wrote. “The public does not want speeches, but concrete work, fair handling, and accountability.” A sharper comment invoked Shah’s own history: “Those who burned Singha Durbar yesterday are in no position to preach a message of peace today... Your Facebook condolences will not bring back the sons and daughters who have lost their lives.”

Kanak Mani Dixit, founding editor of Himal Southasian, who has been critical of the government’s media policies, said this backlash was a rare bright spot.

“The reverse trolling has begun, as was natural, because social media users will certainly target those in power,” he told Newslaundry. “We can also say that social media is helping keep freedom of expression alive in Nepal today, given that independent users have actually come forward to speak openly, which has also given strength to mainstream media reporters and editors.” But he added that social media alone cannot substitute for a free press. Mainstream media remains weakened, he said, both by the same economic pressures reshaping journalism globally and by publishers’ fears of government targeting.

In a relief for the privately-owned press, however, the Supreme Court on July 14 ruled against Shah’s decision to cancel government advertising in private media.

A pattern of digital retaliation

While sympathetic platforms use carefully timed distractions to shield him, independent media outlets that refuse to fall in line face real consequences.

The earliest instance of this predates Shah's premiership by four years. Days before his mayoral election in May 2022, Onlinekhabar, a popular Nepali news portal, published a blog titled “The Viral Candidate and the Disrespect of the National Flag,” which examined the legal rules surrounding the use of Nepal’s flag using a campaign photograph of Shah as a case study.

“Following its publication, Shah’s supporters online launched an unfollow campaign targeting our Facebook page. Within a few hours, the page lost more than 10,000 followers," Binod Ghimire, Onlinekhabar’s news desk editor, told Newslaundry. “At the same time, our newsroom’s landline received threatening phone calls from unidentified individuals. Some callers even threatened to set our office on fire.”

Ghimire added that Onlinekhabar’s stance was that anyone who disagreed should seek legal recourse through the Press Council Nepal, though he is unaware if a formal complaint was ever filed. The campaign, he said, caused only a short-term loss of followers – the outlet’s “strong multi-platform presence” helped it attract new audiences, and its Facebook page now has nearly 2.5 million followers.

Once Shah became prime minister, this playbook was deployed with renewed intensity against media outlets scrutinising his government.

Ukeraa, an independent media house, bore the brunt of similar harassment after publishing a magazine with the cover headline “Democracy Under the Shadow of the Military” in May 2026. The investigative piece detailed Shah’s close ties with the Nepal Army and other security agencies, featuring an illustrated cover portrait of Shah wearing an army cap.

Immediately after the article’s release, Ukeraa’s Facebook page was heavily trolled. Speaking to Newslaundry, Editor-in-Chief KP Dhungana described the nature of these attacks.

“The trolling has become unbearable. Earlier, when we used to get comments in opposition to our story, we would engage with them. We come from a traditional media culture where editors received letters from readers. For us today, a social media comment is a letter to the editor. We would engage in discussions, respond and put our points forward. Now, how do you respond to 600-700 abusive, violent comments?”

Ukeraa was also one of the first outlets to report that Shah’s Chief Advisor, Kumar Ben, had been arrested by the Nepal Police in 2008 over alleged involvement in a telecom racket – a fact that had been kept from the public after Nepal’s Office of the Attorney General decided not to prosecute him. The outlet also investigated minister Dipak Kumar Shah’s decade-old fraud record, reporting that eventually led to his resignation.

These critical reports were met with massive backlash on Facebook. Dhungana added that when they posted the story about Kumar Ben’s arrest, it was taken down by Facebook due to mass reporting by users. Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, cited copyright infringement, even though all of Ukeraa's reporting was original.

“We appealed to Meta, but the content still hasn’t been restored. They took it down, claiming it violated copyright. But who owns the copyright to confidential government documents that were used in the story? I didn’t even receive an email. I only got notifications that the content had been removed from my personal profile,” he added.

Naresh Gyawali, Op-Ed editor at online news portal Ratopati, said that such episodes have set the template for what was to come later on.

“Today, my colleagues are only trying to be careful not to get caught in such campaigns. But this was a clear indication that broader critical thinking, freedom of expression and press independence was narrowing in the country,” Gyawali said.

“To say it clearly, supporters who were encouraged by the state are using troll pages, meme pages and smear campaigns to attack and pressure independent media houses. In a country where journalists are afraid of speaking against the government, analysts are cautious about how they phrase their criticism, and displaced people fear imprisonment for venting their anger, one can only imagine the state of the independent press.”

Gyawali called it an age of “state-sponsored content,” where parody accounts now carry more weight than the news media.

Madhusudan Panthi, editor of Himalaya Television, argued that this coordinated online backlash has become a more potent tool of control than traditional political pressure.

“Compared to traditional forms of political pressure such as legal harassment, withdrawal of government advertising, or denial of access, coordinated social media backlash has become an even greater challenge for television media,” he said.

Earlier, Panthi notes that traditional pressure tactics made it possible to identify which individual or organisation was involved, allowing for legal recourse. “However, because online attacks are carried out under the guise of ‘fake accounts’ and algorithms, finding a legal remedy has become very difficult,” he added.

Organised troll groups, he added, “rarely debate the facts of a news story. Instead, they engage in character assassination of journalists, spread misinformation, and portray media organisations as being driven by hidden agendas.”

Men’s Room Reloaded (MRR)

At the centre of Shah's online support base is Men's Room Reloaded (MRR), a private Facebook group started in 2011 with membership strictly restricted to Nepali men above the age of 18. Dhanu Bishwakarma, a journalist at Himal Khabar, wrote an extensive investigative report on the group, finding that it contains approximately 55,200 active members. Shah was highly active in the group as mayor before officially stepping back.

Following the elections, the group has effectively transformed into an incubator for the current government. Seventeen members of Parliament, including Shah, were part of this private group, and five of them now serve directly in the cabinet.

According to the Himal Khabar report, these ministers include Sasmit Pokharel (Minister for Education, Science and Technology, Youth and Sports, and Government Spokesperson), Sunil Lamsal (Minister for Physical Infrastructure and Transport), Biraj Bhakta Shrestha (Minister for Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation), and Ganesh Poudel (Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation).

Other MRR members in Parliament include Ganesh Karki, Rajiv Khatri, Sulav Kharel, Prashant Upreti, Sagar Dhakal, Badan Bhandari, KP Khanal, Som Sharma, Kamal Subedi, Manish Khanal, Bablu Gupta, and Pukar Bam.

Furthermore, Bishwakarma’s findings revealed that seven active MRR members now directly run the Prime Minister’s secretariat. This inner circle includes Chief Personal Secretary and MRR admin Suvas Sharma, who owns Chiyadani – the café where Shah was recently photographed meeting Home Minister Sudan Gurung. Shah’s political and policy core is anchored by Chief Political Advisor Kumar Byanjankar, personal secretary Naveen Bhandari, and policy coordinator Sudeep Dhakal, all of whom have been by Shah’s side since his mayoral era.

The administrative machinery is rounded out by long-time loyalists that include press facilitator Surendra Bajgain, personal photographer Binaya Shakya, and Bibek Mishra, an active member of the Routine of Nepal Banda (RONB), who also serves as the Prime Minister’s official ICT expert. Ultimately, Bishwakarma’s investigation suggests that this entire political nucleus – including Shah, Byanjankar, and Victor Poudel – originally traced its roots back to this single, private Facebook group.

The public-facing page of MRR, which had 81,000 followers as of July 2026, had previously become so aggressively one-sided during Shah’s mayoral campaign that it was deactivated by Meta and hauled up by the Election Commission for violating Nepal’s election code and spreading misinformation. Journalists who attempt to investigate this network face severe, coordinated retaliation.

Speaking to Newslaundry, Bishwakarma shared the personal toll of her reporting: “After I reported on MRR, there have been offensive comments and abuse in our media’s social media profile from RSP supporters. I also get attacked for my caste. In my piece, I had written about a Bhajan program that MRR recently organised in different parts of Nepal. Some comments mention I am a Dalit; hence I must be Christian, therefore criticising the Bhajan programme organised.”

‘Balen must take responsibility’

With the vast number of online supporters backing Shah and the RSP, severe online trolling and bullying have become systemic.

An activist, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Newslaundry about the psychological impact of these attacks: “I went through an overwhelming amount of mass coordinated attacks for an opinion I expressed on the arrest of the opposition leader KP Oli. I received rape threats, sexually explicit abuse, and fake AI videos of me circulated. After this incident, I became severely depressed and suicidal. Every time I opened my phone, there was a new rape threat, a sexual comment and edited images of me. To me, it wasn’t just online trolling; it was sustained psychological abuse. I went to the cyber investigation bureau to file my case, but I did not get enough institutional support from them.”

Smriti Timalsina, a political activist and a journalist, experienced this firsthand after she criticised Home Minister Sudan Gurung on social media over an unofficial Chinese blockade at the Tatopani border. She was briefly detained by police in what she described as an “abduction-style operation” in late March, and made to sign a document pledging that she would not release statements on sensitive government issues – a description of the events that local police have denied. She was then subjected to a barrage of online harassment including AI-generated images depicting her in compromising situations with a senior political figure, and fake profiles created in her name on TikTok.

“My character was assassinated,” she told Newslaundry. She filed a case with the Nepal Police’s Cyber Bureau, but said she had no way of knowing whether the attacks were coordinated by government sympathisers, party members, or an IT cell.

Senior journalist and Reporters Without Borders correspondent Binod Dhungel remarked that Shah must be held accountable for the behaviour of his base.

“Even if the activity is driven by the Prime Minister's supporters, he should encourage them to refrain from hate speech, bullying, and trolling," Dhungel observes. “As the Prime Minister, he should make a public appeal urging his supporters to refrain from such conduct. Otherwise, it appears organised and intentional. The same principle applies to leaders of other political parties, who also have a responsibility to discourage such behaviour among their supporters.”

Newslaundry sent Dipa Dahal, a press and research expert with the PMO, questions via email on Balendra Shah’s personal ties to social media pages and the online harassment his critics face from his supporters. In response to our email, she said she is “currently unable to provide any quote or comment” at this time. We also sent questions to the admins of the Routine of Nepal Banda (RONB) and MRR to ascertain their ties with the Balendra Shah administration. We will update the report when they respond.

Read part one of this investigation here.

(The author is an editorial intern with Newslaundry.)

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Advocate ‘for Hindus’, celeb-commentary influencer: Meet the latest complainants against CJP

Ashwine Kumar Singh — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:53:59 GMT

A BJP-linked advocate has sought a POCSO case against CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, a social media influencer has sent a separate complaint to the Delhi Police, and a video filmed outside spokesperson Saurav Das’s home has sparked allegations of intimidation.

Rinki Chatterjee Singh’s account of her own career is a long ledger of cases – ones she has filed, and ones filed against her. An FIR was registered against Mamata Banerjee in May on her complaint, she claims, and she filed another against the former West Bengal Chief Minister in June. Two of her Facebook accounts were blocked in India and a third withheld after a legal request from the West Bengal Police, according to her.

This week, she added Abhijeet Dipke to the ledger.

Days after the Cockroach Janta Party’s protest in Delhi ended, the Siliguri-based advocate filed a complaint at the city’s Cyber police station seeking a zero FIR against CJP founder Dipke, party spokesperson Saurav Das and others. She accused them of violating the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, alleging that they took a 12-year-old girl to the NEET protest at Jantar Mantar, where the child was allegedly injured during police action.

Though Singh is only one of two people who recently went to the police against Dipke this week. The other is Faizan Ansari, a social media influencer with over a million Instagram followers, who filed a complaint with the Delhi Police seeking Dipke’s arrest and alleging he is a “Pakistani agent”. Ansari is a Delhi-based content creator otherwise known for his remarks on celebrities and for participating in reality shows like Datebaazi.

These two complaints come against a broader campaign against the CJP’s leadership since the protest wound up – one that has also involved a video shot at Das’s home and the circulation of personal details of women who took part in the protests. All of it comes as the CJP’s core leadership gathers in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar from August 5 for a two-day meeting to chart the movement’s next phase.

🚨#SOS: Certain YouTubers and media channels have broken into my house and are showing the visuals from inside. It’s not just an invasion of my privacy but also a grave security threat for me and my family.

If anti-social elements attack me at my residence as a result of this,…
— Saurav Das (@SauravDassss) August 5, 2026

EXCLUSIVE ON THE PAMPHLET 🚨: @SauravDassss ’ landlord Anand lives in Australia. He pays Rs 12 lakh rent for his posh and lavish home in GK1 in Delhi. Watch the ‘house tour’ on The Pamphlet pic.twitter.com/fRmoMK3Atp
— The Pamphlet (@Pamphlet_in) August 5, 2026

The advocate: ‘Police are lenient to me now’

Singh describes herself as “a Hindu activist and a nationalist”. Her Facebook bio reads: “I advocate for Hindus across India”.

Singh says she has been in the legal profession for 14 years. She was the BJP Mahila Morcha convener for Darjeeling district until 2023, stepping down from the organisational post over professional commitments, though she said she remains associated with the party’s legal cell. Numerous photos on her Facebook profile show her campaigning for the BJP during the recently concluded West Bengal elections.

She claimed that more than 70 criminal cases were registered against her during the Trinamool Congress government’s tenure in West Bengal, around 12 of which remain pending, and alleged these were directly linked to her activism. Her online presence, by her account, was targeted the same way. “In 2022–23, I lost two Facebook accounts, and my third account was withheld this year,” she claimed.

The May FIR against Banerjee, she says, followed her complaint over the former Chief Minister’s remarks on Sanatan Dharma. Her June complaint concerned Banerjee’s remarks linking the central government to political killings in Bangladesh.

Singh, who says she has been vocal against the Banerjee government and frequently raises cases involving alleged “love jihad” in Bengal, said the change of government in the state has changed how the police treat her. “Even this morning, I received a warrant in one case. But now, because a BJP government is here, the police are lenient toward me.”

Her complaint rests on a wider claim about the agitation, which she claimed had a hidden agenda. “This entire NEET agitation is an eyewash and a suspicious movement. They do not want the issue to end. Former Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan tried to include the history and contributions of Hindu kings after the removal of Mughal rulers from the curriculum. Following that, this movement gained momentum. In my personal opinion, there is a larger agenda behind it,” she told Newslaundry.

Without providing evidence, she further alleged: “I believe foreign forces want India to face a situation similar to Nepal and Bangladesh… The ultimate objective is to bring down the Modi government. The deep state plays a complete role in this.”

Students, she said, were not the only ones present at the protest. “I will press the authorities to accept this complaint and register a formal case. If I find that the police are taking a lenient approach, I will request the addition of provisions under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The police have the power to add sections during the course of the investigation.”

She said the organisers must answer for the child’s presence. “Who brought a 12-year-old child to the protest? If they themselves admit they brought the child, then they must also take responsibility.”

“I am confident the zero FIR will be converted into a regular FIR. If the police do not act, I will approach the high court. I will pursue this matter to the end.”

According to Supreme Court lawyer Manas P Hameed, a zero FIR is a mechanism under the BNSS that lets a complainant approach any police station, irrespective of territorial jurisdiction, to report a cognisable offence. The receiving station registers the zero FIR and forwards it to the station with territorial jurisdiction for further examination. The provision exists so that complainants are not turned away merely because they walked into the wrong police station.

The influencer: A complaint at Parliament Street

Ansari said he lodged his written complaint against Dipke at the Parliament Street Police Station in New Delhi, submitting it to the Deputy Commissioner of Police. He accused Dipke of inciting unrest in the country and alleged that he has links with student activist Umar Khalid and with Pakistani operatives.

He also alleged that Dipke’s associates physically assaulted him on two separate occasions, in Pune and in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar – the same city where the CJP leadership is now meeting – and said he had filed formal police complaints over both incidents in Maharashtra.

Ansari frequently tries to draw attention through comments on celebrities and online personalities, including Uorfi Javed, Rakhi Sawant, Tanushree Dutta, Poonam Pandey, and cricketer Suryakumar Yadav.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Faizan Ansari | فايزان أنصاري 🦅 (@faizan.bollywood)

He has also waded into political controversy before, publicly backing BJP MP Kangana Ranaut over her comments on women wearing shorts at the Baijnath Temple in Himachal Pradesh, where Ranaut argued that western attire was being promoted by foreign cultures and was inappropriate for local religious customs.

Reached for comment, Ansari said, “My legal team is in touch with both the Delhi Police and Mumbai Police, seeking an update on the status of my complaints.”

Alleging that CJP supporters targeted him, Ansari claimed: “I was physically attacked in Pune and Aurangabad by Abhijeet Dipke’s supporters while he was present at the spot. I was speaking the truth about Dipke and advising people not to support the CJP because they are acting against our nation. Regarding the allegations of his Pakistani connections, I hold concrete proof against Dipke and will present this evidence directly before the High Court.”

The wider pressure on the CJP

Beyond the two complaints, the CJP’s leadership has faced a campaign conducted largely online.

Das, in a post on X on Wednesday, called the entry into his residence a serious breach of his privacy and a security risk for him and his family. He said that if any anti-social elements were to attack him at his home as a consequence, the YouTubers involved and those coordinating them would be directly responsible, and tagged the Delhi Police. Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien said he would raise the issue in the Rajya Sabha.

TMC raised this on the floor of Parliament this afternoon. My colleague Rajeev Kumar, in Rajya Sabha pic.twitter.com/VJzjtPyfGm
— Derek O'Brien | ডেরেক ও'ব্রায়েন (@derekobrienmp) August 5, 2026

Deepak Sharma, who is part of the pro-Hindutva YouTube channel The Pamphlet, posted a video purporting to show Das’s residence, in which he appears to enter the property before attempting to peer through a window. Promoting the video on X, the channel’s account wrote: “EXCLUSIVE ON THE PAMPHLET: SauravDassss’ landlord Anand lives in Australia. He pays Rs 12 lakh rent for his posh and lavish home in GK1 in Delhi. Watch the ‘house tour’ on The Pamphlet.” The post was later amplified by several pro-Hindutva accounts, including Jaipur Dialogues.

The video followed coordinated online campaigns against women who took part in the CJP protests, during which right-wing social media accounts circulated their names, photographs, phone numbers, residential addresses and details of family members without consent.

The CJP announced on Monday that its core leadership would meet in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar from August 5 for two days to decide the future course of the youth movement, with the founder, spokespersons and organisational leaders in attendance. Speaking to reporters ahead of the meeting, Dipke said the party will function as a pressure group for now, as that is what India needs at the moment.

Speaking to Newslaundry, CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka said, “We will stay focused on what’s next for CJP. Some groups and individuals are resorting to such theatrics just for cheap publicity. They may continue to do so. We will not be bothered by them, and we will stay focused on what's next for CJP.”

Newslaundry reached out to the Siliguri unit of the BJP for comment. This report will be updated if a response is received.

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Rs 2.3 crore a day, 8 years: Yogi govt outspends Modi govt when it comes to ads

Basant Kumar — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:18:57 GMT

While the Modi government at the Centre has spent roughly Rs 6,000 crore on advertising in 11 years, the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has spent close to Rs 7,000 crore in just eight.

Eight years, and more than Rs 2.32 crore a day.

That is what the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has spent, on average, publicising itself since coming to power. Between financial years 2017-18 and 2024-25, the state spent Rs 6,811.94 crore on advertising and publicity – a daily average of Rs 2.32 crore. The figure outpaces even the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, which has spent roughly Rs 1.5 crore a day on advertising over 11 years.

The spending is routed through the state’s Information and Public Relations Department, and it has grown steadily through Adityanath’s tenure, dipping only in the first year of the pandemic before more than doubling. Over 83 percent of it has gone to a single budget head – advertising and visual publicity, the money that flows to newspapers, television channels and, increasingly, digital platforms. Who receives that money is a question the government has repeatedly declined to answer in RTI queries. Newslaundry obtained these expenditure figures from the state government’s own budget documents.

The BJP won the 2017 assembly election, and Adityanath was sworn in as chief minister on March 17, 2017.

Rising year after year

In 2017-18, the first full financial year after Adityanath took office, the information department spent Rs 294.86 crore on publicity. Spending climbed to Rs 330 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 481.67 crore in 2019-20.

It fell to Rs 392.88 crore in 2020-21, the year of the Covid pandemic. Then it surged.

In 2021-22, publicity spending jumped to Rs 1,134.31 crore. The same year, the state spent an additional Rs 1.67 crore publicising Independence Day and Republic Day events, Rs 5.38 crore on the journalists’ welfare fund and Rs 15 crore on the film development fund.

The following year, 2022-23, spending touched Rs 1,420.03 crore – the highest in the available data, corresponding with an election year. That year’s budget separately set aside Rs 15 crore for the film development fund to promote the film sector, Rs 5.52 crore for the journalists’ welfare fund, and Rs 0.99 crore for Independence Day and Republic Day events.

Spending dipped slightly to Rs 1,366.34 crore in 2023-24, then rose again to Rs 1,391.18 crore in 2024-25. That year also saw Rs 15 crore go to the film development fund, Rs 2.98 crore to Independence Day and Republic Day publicity, and Rs 0.24 crore to the journalists’ welfare fund.

For 2025-26, the government has made a budget provision of Rs 918.83 crore across these heads. How much of it has actually been spent is not yet public. If we include the figures for 2025-26, the total comes to around Rs 7,730 crore over nine years – or Rs 2.35 crore per day.

The post-Covid surge in advertising

An analysis of the Information and Public Relations Department’s expenditure shows that between 2017-18 and 2024-25, the single largest share of the publicity budget went to “advertising and visual publicity” — money spent on newspapers, television and other media. The total came to Rs 5,658.16 crore, more than 83 percent of all publicity expenditure in the period.

This section absorbed Rs 236.33 crore in 2017-18, Rs 271.90 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 398.23 crore in 2019-20. In the pandemic year of 2020-21, it was Rs 311.46 crore. It then rose to Rs 951.75 crore in 2021-22 and Rs 1,158.06 crore in 2022-23, before recording Rs 1,122.63 crore in 2023-24 and Rs 1,205.06 crore in 2024-25 – the highest for any year on record.

After advertising and visual publicity, the largest outlay was on publications – the booklets, pamphlets and books the government brings out about its development work. Between 2017-18 and 2024-25, this head accounted for Rs 896.64 crore.

Under this section, it was Rs 29.69 crore in 2017-18, Rs 27.51 crore in 2018-19, Rs 47.12 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 52.50 crore in 2020-21. Then it climbed sharply – Rs 149.97 crore in 2021-22 and Rs 227.44 crore in 2022-23, the highest in the period – before settling at Rs 209.14 crore in 2023-24 and Rs 153.15 crore in 2024-25.

Over the eight years, field publicity accounted for Rs 220.49 crore. Photo services took Rs 7.73 crore, community radio and television Rs 11.46 crore, and film production Rs 20.32 crore.

Advertising remains the biggest bet in 2025-26

The Rs 918.83 crore budgeted for the Information and Public Relations Department in 2025-26 again leans heavily on advertising.

The allocation sets aside Rs 705.14 crore for advertising and visual publicity, Rs 171.12 crore for publications, Rs 37.14 crore for field publicity, Rs 2.74 crore for film production, Rs 1.81 crore for community radio and television, and Rs 0.88 crore for photo services.

If the entire 2025-26 budget is spent, total expenditure by the department between 2017-18 and 2025-26 will reach Rs 7,730.77 crore – of which advertising and visual publicity alone will account for Rs 6,360.56 crore.

Who gets the money?

To find out how much advertising is going to whom, Newslaundry filed several RTI requests with the UP government, but the state’s information department did not share the data. Some applications went unanswered; others were rejected on the grounds that compiling information of this scale would take too long.

In 2021, however, Newslaundry published a report based on an RTI response which showed that the Adityanath government had spent Rs 160 crore on television advertising in a single year. Of that, Rs 28.82 crore went to the Network18 group, led by Mukesh Ambani.

Ads everywhere

Turn on a news channel, open a website, pick up a newspaper or magazine, or travel anywhere from a small town in Uttar Pradesh to the national capital, and the state government’s advertisements are hard to miss.

Over 29 days this July, the Lucknow edition of Dainik Jagran carried 54 Uttar Pradesh government advertisements – three full-page, 32 half-page and 19 quarter-page. That works out to at least two a day. The Lucknow edition of Hindustan carried 49 in the same period: three full-page, 29 half-page and 17 quarter-page. Other newspapers show much the same pattern, day after day.

The pattern extends online. Newslaundry has learnt that asianetnews.com received Rs 94.40 lakh to run banner advertisements on its website for 30 days beginning March 14, 2026, carrying campaigns for Swavalamban Udyam, “UP mein mahila saksham hai” and Superfast Raftaar. The same campaign was issued to oneindia.com at the same time, also for Rs 94.40 lakh.

In January 2026, the information department commissioned a month-long banner campaign on Amar Ujala’s website for Mission Shakti and the Ujjwala scheme, at a cost of Rs 70.80 lakh. Newslaundry found that the state government has placed advertisements on platforms as varied as ShareChat.

Beyond the information department

All the advertising described so far was issued by the information department. But other departments in Uttar Pradesh issue their own.

An RTI response showed that the Department of Industries and Enterprise Promotion spent Rs 60 crore on publicity between 2024-25 and 2025-26. Of this amount, approximately Rs 12 crore was spent on publicity during the Kumbh in Prayagraj.

According to copies of documents seen by Newslaundry, the Directorate of Industries and Enterprise Promotion signed an agreement with the website YourStory in July 2025. Under the agreement, YourStory was to be paid Rs 70 lakh to record and showcase more than 100 success stories of ‘One District, One Product’ entrepreneurs, artisans and innovators across all 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh; produce a video film on local heritage, employment, artisan empowerment and the global reach of the “Made in UP” brand; prepare 500 coffee table books documenting the distinctive crafts, innovation and heritage of all 75 districts; and create reels and video features in regional languages promoting local craftsmanship.

YourStory website carries dozens of stories about ODOP in Uttar Pradesh.

Newslaundry has sent questions to the state’s information department and YourStory. This report will be updated if a response is received.

If you’re reading this story, you’re not seeing a single advertisement. That’s because Newslaundry powers ad-free journalism that’s truly in public interest. Support our work and subscribe today.

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The Raja Singh acquittal pattern: How hate speech cases keep collapsing in court

Anjana Meenakshi, Pooja Prasanna — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 06:30:00 GMT

The controversial 2022 hate speech case for his remarks against the Prophet was arguably the most politically consequential prosecution Raja Singh faced. It was also one of the clearest examples of a pattern that would recur across his acquittals: the prosecution’s inability to translate the charges into a conviction.

Raja Singh

In August 2022, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi was compelled to appeal for peace. The previous day, hundreds of Muslims had poured out into the streets of Hyderabad.

“Gustaq e nabi ki ek saza, sar tann se juda,” the crowd chanted. (‘There is only one punishment for audaciously insulting the Prophet, severe head from body.’)

“I condemn the call for violence,” Asaduddin said on August 23, 2022. “Our fight should be within the ambit of the law. I am not in agreement with the language used. I want to tell protesters that they cannot take the law into their own hands.”

The outpouring on Hyderabad’s streets was not unprompted. T Raja Singh, the Goshamahal MLA and then a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had made comments on Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s final Prophet. In response, a deeply offended community protested, particularly in the Old City. Raja Singh was arrested for his comments and subsequently granted bail 77 days later.

On June 30, 2026, Raja Singh was acquitted in the very case that had dominated headlines four years earlier.

A prominent face of Hindutva politics in Telangana, Raja Singh has built his political career on speeches routinely steeped in Islamophobia. Over the years, several FIRs have been registered against him, yet he has almost never been convicted.

Whether Raja Singh’s speech constituted hate speech and if it was punishable at all is a different question, but a closer examination of court records reveals that these cases fell apart because of weak chargesheets, shoddy investigations, and incomplete technical evidences

TNM had reported in 2022 that while Hyderabad police had registered at least 101 cases against Raja Singh till then, he was only convicted in one case and acquitted in at least 33 cases at that time. These acquittals happened when the BRS and Congress were in power in the state.

In this story, we examined 22 more acquittals and the patterns they reveal.

The case that shook Hyderabad and still ended in acquittal

No speech of the three-time MLA received as much attention as the one against the Prophet.

On the night of August 22, 2022, as the demonstrations against Raja Singh swelled, police deployed additional personnel across sensitive areas and detained several protesters.

Raja Singh’s remarks came in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel, Sri Ram Telangana, titled ‘Faruqui K Aaka Ka Itihaas Suniye’ (Listen to the history of Faruqui’s master). The master in question was a snide reference to Prophet Muhammad.

The immediate context was comedian Munawar Faruqui’s proposed performance in Hyderabad. Faruqui had long been a target of Hindu right-wing groups, who accused him of mocking Hindu deities. Following the accusation, Munawar tendered an apology.

In his video, Raja Singh quickly moved beyond criticism of the comedian and launched into a discussion of Prophet Muhammad, making a series of comments about the Prophet’s life, including references to his marriages and Islamic religious texts.

The controversy unfolded at a particularly volatile moment. Barely three months earlier, remarks made by former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma on a live debate on Times Now about the Prophet had triggered protests across India and provoked diplomatic criticism from several Muslim-majority countries.

The BJP had suspended Nupur Sharma in an attempt to contain the fallout. Faced with another controversy centred on remarks about the Prophet, the party adopted a similar course. Raja Singh was suspended from the BJP, while the Telangana Police arrested him on August 23. He would spend 77 days in custody before securing bail.

His speech had been recorded. The video had been uploaded online. Television channels broadcast it. Clips circulated widely on social media. The reaction was immediate and visible; the controversy it generated was undeniable, and the prosecution had witnesses who claimed to have watched the recording. Police registered a case under Sections 153A, 295A, 504, 505(2), and 506 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), alleging that Raja Singh had promoted enmity between communities, outraged religious feelings, provoked breaches of peace, and committed criminal intimidation.

On its face, this should have been one of the easier cases to prosecute.

Yet when the case finally concluded last month, Raja Singh was acquitted.

How the case fell apart

The acquittal stemmed from how the case was investigated and presented in court.

The prosecution’s case rested heavily on electronic evidence. According to the complainant, Khadar Khan, he watched the video, downloaded it, and submitted it to the police along with a Section 65B certificate, the document required to authenticate electronic records as per the Indian Evidence Act. Another witness told investigators that he had watched the video and that the remarks had hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims.

But by the time the matter reached trial, the key dispute was centred more around whether the prosecution could prove that the video produced before the court was an authentic and reliable record of the speech that had triggered the controversy.

One of Raja Singh’s principal arguments concerned the source of the video itself. The prosecution never produced the original video uploaded to Raja Singh’s YouTube channel. Instead, a prosecution witness admitted that the video contained in the court record had been sourced from a broadcast from Telugu news channel NTV, which carried the footage, rather than the original upload. The defence also argued that the Section 65B certificate accompanying the recording did not specifically certify the alleged original source.

The distinction went to the heart of the prosecution’s case.

“Since what the police produced was a video telecast on a channel, there were pauses, sections of the videos were deleted and edited. In a court of law, the only thing that matters is whether the original video was produced or not,” Karuna Sagar, Raja Singh’s lawyer, told TNM.

The forensic examination recorded discontinuities, pauses, and breaks within the video. The expert witness acknowledged that such interruptions could result from deletion, editing or removal of content. Seizing on that admission, the defence argued that the recording could not be treated as a complete and unaltered version of the original speech.

The issue was not necessarily whether the video had in fact been manipulated. Rather, the defence sought to show that investigators had failed to eliminate that possibility.

The investigation itself provided further ground for challenge.

According to the defence, the investigating officer admitted during trial that he had neither examined the devices through which the video was viewed nor verified the computer allegedly used to download it. Ownership details of those devices were not collected. The downloading process itself was not independently verified.

The translated transcript of Raja Singh’s remarks became another area of dispute.

Like many speeches delivered by Raja Singh, the video contained a mix of languages, colloquial expressions, and references that required translation. The prosecution relied on a translated version of the speech during trial. Raja Singh’s lawyers challenged its reliability, arguing that the individual who prepared the transcript possessed no recognised qualification, certification or formal training in translation. According to the defence, the document reflected the witness’s personal understanding of the speech rather than expert linguistic analysis.

In many criminal cases, translation is a procedural detail. In hate speech cases, it can become much more important. Questions of meaning, context, and intent often turn on the precise words used and how those words are interpreted. By challenging the translator’s expertise, the defence was also challenging the prosecution’s interpretation of Raja Singh’s remarks.

The most consequential issue, however, concerned intent.

Among the charges leveled against Raja Singh was Section 295A of the IPC, which criminalises deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings. The provision requires more than proof that a statement caused offence. Prosecutors must establish that the accused acted with a deliberate and malicious intention.

Legal scholar Shahrukh Alam said courts typically infer intent from the circumstances in which a speech is delivered rather than requiring direct evidence of a speaker's state of mind. “If you are doing something, and know that it will have certain consequences, the presumption is that you did it deliberately and knowingly,” she said. “Intent is read from context and acting in a way that you know certain consequences will follow.”

The defence said that the prosecution had failed to do so, arguing that some of the references cited in the case were traceable to Islamic source material. The defence further argued that the investigating officer had not examined whether the statements attributed to Raja Singh were derived from such material.

By the time the case concluded, the trial had moved far from the public outrage that initially surrounded it. The protests, the political fallout, and the national attention had established the significance of the controversy. They could not, however, substitute for the evidentiary burden required in a criminal court.

When the court acquitted Raja Singh in June, it did so after concluding that the prosecution had failed to prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt.

The outcome was significant because this was not a marginal case. “This could have persuasive value in the Nupur Sharma case,” Karuna Sagar told TNM.

No one offended by Raja Singh

Since December 2024, Raja Singh has been acquitted in 22 more cases, including the 2022 controversial Prophet remark.

In 15 cases, the judge agreed with the defence, which had argued that no public grievance, hurt feelings, or private complaints were found. In 14 cases, it was ruled that no real world disturbance, communal violence, or threat to peace was recorded.

For instance, in April 2023, Shahinayatgunj police Sub-Inspector (SI) Rajeswara Reddy took up a suo motu complaint against Raja Singh following a Ram Navami rally speech, where he had called for the economic boycott of Muslims.

In his speech, the MLA said, “Those who say this country is not ours, you belong to Pakistan. There will be a tandav (furore). If a Hindu stands up, every mulla (slur word used to refer to Muslims) will be wiped out. You are the murderer of our mother, the Holy Cow.”

The speech didn’t end there. Raja Singh also spoke about how residents of Old City, an area that chiefly houses Muslim residents, are “desh ke gaddar” (traitors). “One says, no one here will purchase from a shop run by Hindus. I want to clarify that if we Hindus decided to implement the same, then just think what would happen of you? You wouldn’t even be allowed to beg for alms because it is Hindus who give alms.”

By a simple understanding of language and intent, Raja Singh’s speech met the criteria for hate speech. India does not have a universally applicable definition in law for hate speech. But in its 267th report, the Law Commission of India defined hate speech as “written or spoken, signs, visible representations within the hearing or sight of a person with the intention to cause fear or alarm, or incitement to violence.”

Several of Raja Singh’s speeches examined by TNM accused Muslims of being disloyal to the nation, belonging in Pakistan, or acting against India’s interests. Such remarks may potentially attract Section 153B of the IPC, which criminalises assertions that members of a religious, linguistic, regional or other group are less loyal to the nation because of their identity. A review of the cases examined by TNM found that the provision was rarely invoked against Raja Singh.

Delivered at Begum Bazaar, a commercial hub with several Muslim businesses, the “desh ke gaddar” speech was heard by the persecuted community.

But how does a court determine whether a speech was intended to cause communal harm? According to Shahrukh Alam, criminal courts generally infer intent from the foreseeable consequences of a person's actions rather than requiring direct evidence of their state of mind.

In practice, this means courts can consider factors such as the audience being addressed, the political context in which a speech was made, and whether the speaker could reasonably anticipate the consequences of their remarks.

In March 2023, another speech by Raja Singh posted on Facebook showed him urging Hindus to purchase Holi festival items only from shops whose owners support and participate in burning the ‘Holika’ and to boycott “desh ke gaddar”.

Among other things, Raja Singh was let off because he did not clearly use the terms Islam or Muslims. “There is no chance for persons who belong to Muslim community to get hurt because of the speech of the accused, because there is no mention in the speech of the accused about the Muslim community or Islam religion,” the judge ruled.

Raja Singh’s use of euphemisms, while hardly indirect, also seem to shield him. He never quite refers to the group he is targeting as ‘Muslims’. Instead, he calls them cow killers or traitors, leaving just enough leeway to get away in courts by saying no specific community was referenced.

Acquittals on technicalities

But aside from the ruling that no feelings were outraged, a repeated occurrence was how the police investigation and the prosecution botched technical evidence crucial to the case.

In 11 of the 22 cases TNM looked at, Raja Singh was acquitted because of defective, invalid, or unverifiable Section 65B Certificates, a crucial document under the Indian Evidence Act. In 10 cases, the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) voice/video analysis was either missing or botched.

This lapse is exemplified in the Ram Navami speech case three years ago, registered against Raja Singh by SI Rajeswara Reddy.

During a Ram Navami procession held on March 30, 2023, Raja Singh called for the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra, something he has said on many occasions.

According to the complaint, several of Raja Singh’s supporters also waved photographs of Nathuram Godse, MK Gandhi’s assassin, and “raised slogans with intention to create enmity among the public on the grounds of religion”.

Visuals of the Godse photo being waved were widely reported in the media.

Addressing the crowd, Raja Singh was heard saying, “Today, there are 100 crore Hindus in India. So why not declare India as a Hindu country? Today, we have more than 50 Islamic countries and 150 Christian countries. So today I want to ask those ‘impotent’ leaders who are against Akhand Hindu Rashtra, why are you objecting to it?”

Thread w/ @akhmxt 🚨🚨🚨

Suspended BJP MLA T Raja Singh detained twice, served 2 notices & has 5 FIRs registered against him for making communal speeches that violate his bail conditions.

What's it going to take for authorities to arrest him and cancel his bail? + pic.twitter.com/6LIKDXFRvE
— Shinjinee Majumder (@shinjineemjmdr) April 8, 2023

The case was registered two days later, on April 1, under Sections 296 (disturbing religious assembly) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of the peace) of the IPC.

Raja Singh was, however, acquitted. The court noted that the SI and other prosecution witnesses could not recall the exact slogans raised during the procession, or prove that they were actually on duty at the time.

It also observed that no member of the public had complained that Raja Singh’s speech was provocative, which in turn meant that public peace was not disturbed.

“It was felt that the present case was filed only basing on the assumption and presumptions that the speech of the accused will cause enmity between two communities because if it is really provocative in nature, certainly complaint will be lodged by the people whose feelings were hurt” because of Raja Singh’s speech, the judgement said.

This reason was cited in multiple acquittals – the police almost never managed to bring in witnesses who could attest that these remarks indeed affected communal harmony among Hindus and Muslims, particularly in Old City where most of these speeches were delivered.

The judgement also suggested that calling for Hindu Rashtra wasn’t even provocative in the first place. “It is surprising to hear from the above said witnesses as to how the speech made by the accused to form Hindu Rashtra is provocative in nature,” judge S Sree Devi observed.

Raja Singh was acquitted in 15 cases as the defence argued that no public grievance, hurt feelings, or private complaints could be found or were taken up after a particular speech was made by the MLA. In 14 cases, the judge stated that no real world disturbance, communal violence or threat to peace could be found.

Consistently, judge Sree Devi ruled that ‘one cannot assume and presume’ future communal threats. She held that preemptive police apprehensions of potential future unrest have “no leg to stand” in the eye of the law without physical, proof-backed evidence of real-world disruption to public order.

Similarly in 2017, Raja Singh – in an interview with NTV Telugu – had said that he will dismantle the masjids located at Kasi, Mathura, and build a Hindu temple there and that he was preparing a special army for the same. He also likened Hyderabad’s Old City to a ‘mini Pakistan.’

This case didn’t stand because the forensic analysis of the video was bungled.

The prosecution’s case rested primarily on a YouTube video and a forensic voice-matching report, but the court held that the electronic records did not satisfy the mandatory requirements for admissibility. The Section 65B certificate accompanying the downloaded YouTube video was found to be defective because it was undated, omitted the source URL and other identifying particulars of the video. The certificate also failed to describe the computer system or storage media used to create the copy.

The court also rejected the prosecution’s forensic evidence linking the voice in the interview to Raja Singh. Investigators had obtained a CD containing his specimen speeches from the Telangana Legislative Assembly and sent it for forensic comparison with the interview recording. Although the FSL submitted a voice-matching report, the court ruled that the specimen voice recording itself was not legally admissible because the prosecution had failed to obtain a valid Section 65B certificate from the Assembly certifying its authenticity.

Since the reference sample was inadmissible, the subsequent forensic opinion also lost evidentiary value.

Apart from these evidentiary defects, the court found no proof that the video had actually disturbed public order or inflamed communal tensions. Police witnesses admitted that no law-and-order problem arose after the video was uploaded and that no member of the public had complained of hurt religious sentiments.

Other grounds for Raja Singh’s acquittal

In nine cases, Raja Singh was acquitted as witnesses turned hostile. In eight cases, electronic evidence went missing, and in seven cases, the court rejected presumptions connecting gestures/terms to target religions.

But by now, the pattern is clear. Either no one outside the police is willing to testify against Raja Singh, or the police can’t find such people who can describe his hate speeches and the harm they cause by further polarising people on communal lines in Old City.

The police themselves have botched basic procedural work such as submitting video evidence, or even just proving they were on duty at the time.

And these are instances from just the past 1.5 years.

Raja Singh has been infamous for Islamophobic hate speech for over 10 years now. From Telangana to Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, he has addressed huge gatherings and called for economic boycott of Muslims, using bulldozers to raze their homes, demolishing mosques in contested sites, and even to poison girls who are ‘victims of love jihad’ if they refuse to convert back to Hinduism.

In Telangana, activists have been seeking legal action against him for hate speech since as early as 2016. Cases have fallen because the police didn’t take permission required to prosecute a legislator.

In one case from 2010, a mob led by Raja Singh was accused of setting fire to a mosque, damaging the gate of another mosque, attacking a CRPF officer, and vandalising a police vehicle. This was before he first became an MLA in 2014.

All the accused were acquitted 12 years later, after most of the witnesses turned hostile against the MLA. The main complainant claimed that the police had made him sign a blank paper all those years ago. Even a police officer among the witnesses said he couldn’t identify anyone’s face from the mob.

Two more cases over the attacks on the two mosques also ended in acquittals 12 years later.

This has continued to happen under successive non-BJP governments in Telangana.

Raja Singh’s lawyer Karuna Sagar also represents Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Bandi Sanjay, BJP MP from Telangana. The lawyer was with Sanjay’s son Bhageerath when he was taken into custody in the POCSO case against him.

Karuna Sagar is a celebrity in his own right among BJP supporters and a key figure in the Telangana BJP. He was one of the complainants who filed cases against AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi over his infamous, alleged speech of “removing the police from the streets for 15 minutes” in 2012, in which Owaisi too, incidentally, was acquitted in 2022.

By now, Karuna Sagar is all too familiar with the legal loopholes his clients can use to their advantage.

In March 2026, Telangana government introduced a hate speech bill of its own in the state Assembly which is now under review of a Select Committee. Barring a few operational differences, the Telangana draft legislation was much like Karnataka’s law introduced in 2025.

“We focus on definitions of hate speech, or on offense and insult being subsequent problems of hate speech. But those are not issues: discrimination and structured violence is. A law should ideally not view two groups as equals. But neither 153A of the IPC nor state legislations like Karnataka’s hate speech draft law clarify one important facet of hate speech. Hateful speech causes discrimination. It is always a speech targeted at marginalised groups, not the majority,” Shahrukh Alam said.

With inputs from Jahnavi

This report was republished from The News Minute as part of The News Minute-Newslaundry alliance.

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One year after Dharali: The growing cost of building in a fragile Himalaya

Hridayesh Joshi — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:55:37 GMT

One year after the Dharali disaster, many families are still rebuilding. Newslaundry reports from the village to understand why climate-linked disasters across the Himalaya are becoming more frequent and destructive.

A year after the Dharali disaster, the reconstructed road leading to Gangotri has been shifted a few metres away from the banks of the Bhagirathi river. The market, once bustling with tourists during the yatra season, now wears a lifeless look. Most shops and houses still remain buried under debris. Apart from a handful of shops that have reopened, there is little sign of life. People are trying to piece together their lives, but they continue to face challenges.

Dharali after the disaster of August 5, 2025. (Image courtesy Hridayesh Joshi)

The disaster occurred in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand on August 5 last year, after continuous rain on the almost vertical slopes caused a massive landslide in a village situated just about 20 kilometers from Gangotri. That day the Kheerganga, a tributary of the Bhagirathi, suddenly flooded and swept away a major part of Dharali – its market and homes. More than 50 people died and about 150 buildings were destroyed, including homes, hotels, and homestays.

Newslaundry had extensively covered the disaster last year. Only one body was recovered in Dharali, and that too on the day of the disaster.

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“The relief workers were here only for a month. They had neither the will nor the equipment or expertise to search for those buried under the rubble. After they left, our dogs did more digging than they ever could,” Dharali resident Pradeep Panwar told me with a wry smile.

Residents said compensation for house reconstruction is yet to reach everyone. District Magistrate Prashant Arya, however, said the process is ongoing. “It is a continuous process. We are releasing compensation as people submit documents proving ownership of their land. The total compensation of Rs 5 lakh is being paid in two installments.”

One year after the disaster, the question is bigger than financial compensation or Dharali. There have been several other disasters in the Himalayan region, from Uttarakhand to Himachal Pradesh to Sikkim to Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. These are not merely natural disasters, and their impact is not only economic loss but also mental health. Newslaundry had covered some of them, including the Joshimath land subsidence and the Himachal Pradesh floods.

These calamities served as grim reminders of ecological fragility, unsustainable development, and the increasing impact of extreme weather events. This year, the role of unusually intense rainfall in pockets of the hilly state of Nagaland was evident, as it not only devastated parts of the state but also aggravated the floods in neighbouring Assam.

What makes these events particularly striking is that they have unfolded during a deficient monsoon linked to the El Nino effect. The overall monsoon has been around 16 percent deficient so far, and rainfall over the next two months will be below normal. Despite this, flash floods have occurred not only in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Jammu and Kashmir, but also in Assam and some states in Northeast India.

According to Madhavan Nair Rajeevan, former secretary of Ministry of Earth Sciences and Vice Chancellor of Atria University, Bengaluru, this apparent contradiction is a well-known feature of deficient monsoon years.

“In years with a deficient monsoon, we normally receive more rainfall over the Himalayas and the Northeast because the monsoon trough and monsoon activity remain confined to these regions for a longer period. This is an observed phenomenon. There is nothing unusual about it.”

But many experts argue that unsustainable development, deforestation and rampant riverbed mining have significantly aggravated the impact of disasters in the Himalayas. In recent years, Uttarakhand has witnessed several public protests against large-scale deforestation, while a rising incidence of forest fires has further degraded fragile mountain ecosystems.

Dr S P Sati, a geologist who has spent decades studying the ecology, geomorphology and geology of the Himalayas, underscores the critical role of dense forests, healthy wetlands and intact catchments in reducing the impact of extreme rainfall. According to him, rising temperatures are causing clouds to condense at higher altitudes, exposing vulnerable mountain slopes to more intense rainfall events. At the same time, deforestation, the degradation of wetlands and extensive mining in riverbeds have further weakened the natural resilience of these landscapes.

“In many parts of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, the Himalayan slopes are extremely steep, with near-vertical rock faces. Many of these areas also have hanging glaciers, making them even more vulnerable. Such fragile mountain slopes do not require very heavy rainfall to trigger landslides, as we witnessed in Dharali last year. That is why healthy catchments – with dense forests and well-functioning wetlands – are so important. They help absorb and retain rainwater, slowing its movement downslope instead of allowing it to rush immediately into rivers. This natural buffering capacity can significantly reduce the intensity of floods and landslides.”

Scientists and researchers have issued similar warnings following the Assam floods. IIT Guwahati professor Arup Kumar Sarma has cited riverine mining and boulder mining in the hilly states surrounding Assam as a cause, while some experts have pointed to unplanned development.

Prof Anjal Prakash, an author contributing to many IPCC reports and associated with FLAME University, Pune says what we are seeing this monsoon is not a contradiction.

“Overall rainfall deficits and devastating floods in J&K and Nagaland can coexist because seasonal averages no longer describe how rain actually falls. The monsoon is compressing into shorter, more violent bursts, so a district can be rain-deficient for weeks and still see a cloudburst that overwhelms its rivers in a single night. Hill states magnify this risk,” he said.

Professor Prakash said that decades of unplanned construction, road-cutting, and deforestation have stripped slopes of the vegetation and soil structure that once absorbed and slowed runoff.

“When forest cover thins and hillsides are cut for roads or buildings, rainwater moves faster and carries more debris, turning a rainfall anomaly into a landslide or flash flood. Climate variability is loading the dice, but it’s unsustainable development in fragile terrain that is turning that variability into disaster. Building resilience means restoring natural drainage and slope stability, not just adding rain gauges.”

Several villages in the Himalayan region are in high landslide and subsidence zones and are not fit for habitation. (Image courtesy Hridayesh Joshi)

One of the biggest challenges after a major disaster in the Himalaya is identifying geologically stable and safe land for rehabilitation. Unlike the plains, landslides and flash floods often permanently alter the landscape, leaving very few suitable locations for resettling affected communities – a challenge repeatedly acknowledged by the Uttarakhand government and highlighted by researchers studying disaster-prone mountain regions.

Arya says the administration follows the state’s rehabilitation policy while trying to keep affected families as close to their original settlements as possible. He adds that local communities often play an important role in identifying suitable land for resettlement.

“Under the state’s rehabilitation policy, every effort is made to resettle affected families within their own village. Where suitable land is not available, we explore options in a nearby village or elsewhere within the same tehsil. Eligible families are provided up to 180 square yards of land for constructing a house. In many cases, support from the local community is crucial in identifying suitable land and ensuring that the rehabilitation process moves forward.”

While acknowledging that natural disasters in the mountains cannot be completely prevented, Prof Pradeep Srivastava, geologist at IIT Roorkee says the scale of destruction can be reduced with the help of science and a clear policy roadmap.

According to him, the engineering knowledge, advanced construction materials and technology needed for more sustainable development already exist; the challenge lies in ensuring that science, policy and implementation work together.

“Whether it is Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim or the mountains of Northeast India, climate change is making these regions increasingly vulnerable. We understand the challenges posed by fragile geology, steep physiography and changing rainfall patterns at high altitudes. The real challenge is whether lawmakers, bureaucrats, planners and technologists can work together. We already have advanced technology and construction materials to build more sustainably in these fragile landscapes. What is needed now is the commitment and honesty to apply that knowledge in the way our mountain ecosystems demand.”

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The enigma of BlueKraft: The narrative factory behind Brand Modi

Prateek Goyal — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 04:30:00 GMT

The final part of a Newslaundry investigation into Bollywood, power and the engineering of public opinion.

(Illustration by Manjul)

Read the previous instalments of this series here and here.

On September 24, 2025, thousands of people were on the streets of Leh demanding statehood for Ladakh, jobs and constitutional protection for a fragile high-altitude ecology. Within 72 hours, that was no longer the conversation.

A commentator named Richa Dwivedi had appeared on a platform called New India Junction to argue that the activist Sonam Wangchuk had inflamed the crowd by invoking the Arab Spring and Nepal’s Gen Z protests, after which the mob turned violent – and that Congress councillors had been “caught on camera” egging protesters toward stone-pelting and bandh calls. Around the same time another commentator, Ojas Bhandari, was posting videos calling Wangchuk “anti-national” and noting that he had reportedly been in Islamabad shortly before the Pahalgam attack. The trending question soon was whether Sonam Wangchuk was a foreign asset.

Then on July 20 this year, on the day of the ‘Chalo Sansad’ march, another content creator Garima Upreti questioned the violence at the Cockroach Janta Party protest and tagged Wangchuk to say “Look at your goons. Is this a national capital or Kashmir?”

Trace the accounts that drove the pivot, and the trail runs, again and again, to a single organisation – one registered, improbably, under “human health and social care services,” half-owned by a tech millionaire who says he wants nothing more to do with it, and followed, personally, on X, by the Prime Minister of India.

Its name is BlueKraft. And the question it has never answered is the simplest one of all: who pays for it all?

One address, many masks

BlueKraft does not look like much from the outside, which is the point. Its work surfaces under names that suggest grassroots energy or neutral journalism – New India Junction, The True Picture, Know The Nation, Modi Story – and almost never under its own. Newslaundry’s review of corporate filings, platform records and public profiles indicates that these platforms share staff, addresses and ownership with BlueKraft, and that the commentators who front them – Dwivedi, Bhandari, and others such as Garima Upreti – have each been associated with the organisation.

The fingerprints recur across episodes that look unrelated. Until you line them up.

In February 2026, a tightly coordinated campaign under the hashtag #CompromisedCongress flooded social media with AI-generated visuals lampooning four generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family; BJP leaders and state units amplified it, and Dwivedi and Upreti released videos branding Nehru “compromised”. The entire campaign was made by BlueKraft. Years earlier, in April 2018, at least 13 BJP Union ministers – Piyush Goyal, Kiren Rijiju, Smriti Irani and Thaawar Chand Gehlot among them – spent two days promoting The True Picture as a fact-checking site, even as the site was dismissing as “fake news” two Indian Express reports the paper stood by: one on the caste-based murder of a Dalit youth in Gujarat, the other on a directive discouraging officials from attending a Dalai Lama event. The True Picture doesn’t seem to be active anymore though, with its last post on X in April 2022.

#CompromisedCongress trend alert made by BlueKraft.

These seemed to be different masks with one face: a protest reframed, an opposition family mocked, and a fact-checker that checked in only one direction. Three of the people we found linked to the operation – Richa Dwivedi, Vasudha Madhogaria and Shiva Mudgil – are among the small number of accounts followed on X by Narendra Modi himself.

What BlueKraft sells, in Newslaundry’s assessment of the body of work reviewed, is not praise for the Prime Minister. Praise is cheap and obvious. What it sells is harder to see and far more valuable: the appearance that the praise is spontaneous – that it bubbles up from volunteers, from journalists, from filmmakers and athletes and ordinary citizens who simply, organically, arrived at the same conclusion about one man. Almost everything that follows is a variation on that single technique.

The man who built the machine and left it

To understand the factory, start with the engineer who designed it and then walked out.

Rajesh Jain belongs to the founding generation of India’s internet. An IIT Bombay graduate with a master’s from Columbia, he built IndiaWorld, one of the country’s first web portals, and sold it to Satyam Infoway in 1999 for around USD 115 million. His marketing firm, Netcore, brought him into contact with the BJP around 2008, when Piyush Goyal hired him for the party’s SMS outreach. Jain wanted to do more than vend software. In January 2009, with Goyal’s backing, he launched “Friends of BJP” – a network of professionals and volunteers to mobilise the middle class for that year’s election.

It is a small detail, but a telling one: the people who passed through that early experiment would go on to build the BJP’s entire digital apparatus. Hitesh Jain, his future BlueKraft co-founder, was there. So was Amit Malviya, who would come to run the BJP IT Cell.

Jain’s obsession was American campaign science – the data-and-targeting machine behind Barack Obama’s 2008 win. In November 2009 he hosted Pete Dagher, a Chief of Campaign hand from the Obama operation, for a closed-door session in Delhi; he devoured the literature, including the data-driven playbook later popularised in The Victory Lab. After meeting Modi in early 2010 – and accompanying him on a visit to China the following year – he decided he had found the leader worth building it all for. He told Modi he wanted to make him Prime Minister and would do it with his own money, not the party’s.

By 2014 he had built it. Under an umbrella called NITI – Network of Ideas for Transforming India – Jain stood up a suite of platforms: NITI Central, a pro-BJP website to counter what he saw as hostile mainstream coverage; IndiaVotes, which turned Election Commission data into a searchable, booth-level database his teams mined to find the BJP’s most winnable seats; and India272.com – named for the seats needed for a majority – which let supporters work for Modi without ever joining his party. Piyush Goyal, who chaired the BJP’s Information and Communication Campaign Committee, unveiled it publicly as “Mission 272+” at a July 2013 press conference in Delhi. Modi’s digital aide and officer on special duty Hiren Joshi apparently coordinated strategy from the Gujarat CMO. The tools, data and messaging systems were, by multiple accounts, shared informally with BJP workers and RSS-linked volunteers in the run-up to the vote. It was, at the time, the most sophisticated political machine India had built.

Then the architect lost faith. By his own account, Jain grew disillusioned within months of the 2014 victory, convinced the government had squandered its best window for reform, that its first budget merely recycled its predecessor’s, that nothing was being done for ordinary Indians’ livelihoods. His breaking point, he has said, was demonetisation. In 2017 he quit the public posts the victory had won him – a board seat at NTPC, a membership at UIDAI, the body that runs Aadhaar. In 2018 he stepped down as a director of BlueKraft, the foundation he had incorporated with Hitesh Jain in July 2016.

Rajesh Jain takes oath as UIDAI member.

But he never let go of the asset. MCA records reviewed by Newslaundry show Rajesh Jain still holds 50 percent of the organisation he says he abandoned.

Rajesh Jain was asked about his account of breaking with the BJP, his continuing 50 percent shareholding in BlueKraft, and his knowledge of its current work. His response will be added here if received.

The man who stayed

Where one founder walked away, the other walked toward the centre, and brought an operator with him.

Hitesh Jain, a lawyer, emerged as the figure running BlueKraft, alongside its CEO, Akhilesh Mishra. Mishra’s résumé followed an unusual trajectory: party war room, to government platform, to a private foundation that promotes the government.

An IIT-Dhanbad engineer who began in corporate sales – Atlas Copco, Castrol, Tata Hitachi, Valvoline – Mishra left in 2012 to volunteer for Modi, then ran the content division at the BJP’s National Digital Operations Centre, the party’s central digital war room built to deliver the very “Mission 272+” target Rajesh Jain had first conceived. NDOC, which ran from roughly 2012 to 2015, monitored coverage in real time, crunched voter data and coordinated messaging. From there Mishra moved to MyGov, the government’s own citizen-engagement platform, where he spent about 22 months as content director before joining BlueKraft as CEO in November 2016 – a post he still holds, and for which he has since collected a digital-transformation award from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

The war room he came from has a contested reputation. NDOC has been the subject of allegations Newslaundry could not independently verify: that it ran or amplified campaigns against critics of Modi and the BJP, and targeted film actors including Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan. The episode most often cited is the 2015 “intolerance” row, when Aamir Khan said his then wife had wondered whether the family should leave India, and a campaign followed pressing Snapdeal to drop him as an ambassador – which it did. That the pressure traced back to NDOC remains an allegation. But it sets the template the later operation would refine: less of a war room that attacks from the shadows, more a foundation that praises in the open, under a dozen friendly names.

Akhilesh Mishra awarded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology for digital transformation.

Today Mishra and Hitesh Jain are the two faces most often on BlueKraft’s stages: at book launches, at youth rallies, at musicals about the Prime Minister. Mishra also writes newspaper columns defending government policy.

Akhilesh Mishra and Hitesh Jain with PM Modi.

Hitesh Jain and Akhilesh Mishra were sent a detailed questionnaire on BlueKraft’s ownership and control, its revenue sources, its relationship (if any) with the BJP and the government, and the operation of New India Junction, Know The Nation, Modi Story and The True Picture. Their responses will be added here if received.

A ‘human health, social services’ foundation for one man

On paper, BlueKraft Foundation – earlier called BlueKraft Digital Foundation – exists to promote civic participation, research and digital literacy, and is filed, oddly, under “human health and social care services” in MCA records. In practice, Newslaundry’s review of its output found a body organised almost entirely around a single human being.

The same surnames, the same small circle, keep closing back on each other.

Of three lakh shares, the two founders held 1.5 lakh each. After Rajesh Jain’s 2018 exit, the directorship passed first to Yakshya Chheda – a lawyer who had worked with Hitesh Jain at ALMT Legal – and then, in 2021, to Pankaj Jain, described in filings as Hitesh Jain’s cousin.

The foundation first registered at Rajesh Jain’s office in Peninsula Towers, Lower Parel. In 2018 it moved a short distance to Lodha Supremus, an address that, per documents reviewed by Newslaundry, is owned through the firm Netsurf Communications by Hitesh Jain’s brother, Sujit Jain – who is also the second-largest shareholder, after Mahaveer Jain himself, in Mahaveer Jain Films. Most of its staff, meanwhile, work out of a second office at 9, Hanuman Road, Connaught Place, in Delhi.

And the money keeps climbing. MCA filings reviewed by Newslaundry show revenue of roughly Rs 11.5 crore in 2017-18, Rs 8.33 crore in 2018-19, Rs 2.84 crore in 2019-20, Rs 7 crore in 2020-21, Rs 10.95 crore in 2021-22, Rs 10 crore in 2022-23, Rs 17.5 crore in 2023-24 and Rs 22.03 crore in 2024-25 – with separate donations of Rs 5.75 crore in 2018-19 and Rs 2.5 crore the next year.

The curve climbs sharply in exactly the years the image-making intensified. What the filings do not show is where most of the money comes from. That is the hole at the centre of BlueKraft: how a foundation that churned out dozens of books praising Modi and a stream of Brand Modi content financed its operations. In December 2025 it quietly renamed itself BlueKraft Foundation, both Jains still on the share register.

So: what does the money buy?

Manufacturing the volunteer

It buys, first, the illusion of grassroots devotion.

Modi Story presents itself as a volunteer-driven effort to collect testimonials about the Prime Minister from people who have crossed his path. “The making of New India is the story of common Indians coming together,” its site declares. “If one Modi can give the country new momentum, imagine a nation with thousands of such inspired individuals.” But Newslaundry found Modi Story is no spontaneous citizen project: it operates from BlueKraft’s Delhi office, shares its staff, runs under an entity called Integrate M Power, and is linked in BlueKraft’s own MCA records to a transaction with BJP leader Anoop Anthony Joseph. The “volunteers” are an operation.

A page from the Modi Story website.

Their product is a stream of short, glowing testimonials, each praising Modi in seemingly personal terms. The narratives are calibrated to feel intimate and incidental – that ‘Pariksha Pe Charcha’ eased students’ exam stress, that a single Modi suggestion lifted tourism in Assam, that Ujjwala Yojana empowered millions of women, that he is a leader who connects “at a personal level”. The speakers span the spectrum of Indian celebrity: Olympians and athletes Neeraj Chopra, Abhinav Bindra, P V Sindhu, Manu Bhaker, Mithali Raj and Ravindra Jadeja; industrialists like Baba Kalyani and Apollo Tyres’ Onkar Kanwar; and film figures including Jackie Shroff, R Madhavan, Nagarjuna, Boney Kapoor, Madhur Bhandarkar, singer Kailash Kher and music director Anu Malik. Each clip is then amplified by the BJP’s official handles and by the speakers themselves.

It is, in effect, a coordinated content pipeline that arrives looking like a thousand unconnected people independently moved to speak. (A sister platform, Modi Archive, performs the same service for the past, curating photographs, audio and video from across Modi’s political life.)

The BJP leader linked to the operation, Anoop Anthony Joseph, is himself a useful node. In 2024, he organised a Christmas event in Delhi at which Modi met Christian religious leaders from Kerala – outreach and image-making braided into one.

Modi Story, Integrate M Power and Anoop Anthony Joseph were asked about the platform’s relationship with BlueKraft, its description of itself as volunteer-led, and the recorded transaction. Responses will be added here if received.

Manufacturing the ceremony

It nearly buys the appearance of state occasion.

BlueKraft has become a major publisher of pro-Modi books – Modi@20: Dreams Meet Delivery, The Emergency Diaries, Exam Warriors (written by Modi himself), Mann Ki Baat@100, 370: Undoing the Unjust, Ambedkar and Modi, among others – but the books matter less than their launches, which are staged to look like affairs of state.

Modi@20, co-published by BlueKraft and published by Rupa Publications, was released at Vigyan Bhavan by the Vice-President, with Amit Shah, S Jaishankar and Anurag Thakur present, Karan Johar and Sidharth Malhotra in the audience, P V Sindhu and Mary Kom on hand, and the whole thing carried on Sansad TV. Its 22 essayists were chosen for reach – Amit Shah and Ajit Doval beside Sudha Murty, Sadhguru, Uday Kotak, Nandan Nilekani and Devi Shetty. Mann Ki Baat@100 was presented to President Droupadi Murmu by Hitesh Jain and Mishra; copies of Modi@20 and Mann Ki Baat@100 were handed to Pope Francis. A foundation’s product, dressed in the full regalia of the republic and the diplomatic corps.

BlueKraft co-published Doubling Dreams: Transforming Agriculture in Modi’s New India, co-edited by an associate editor of the RSS mouthpiece Organiser, which advances the claim that farmers’ incomes have doubled under Modi – an assertion several reports have found is not borne out by the data. Ambedkar and Modi, meanwhile, drew a political backlash after composer Ilaiyaraaja, who wrote its foreword, asserted similarities between B R Ambedkar and the Prime Minister.

The seams occasionally show. In 2018, a PIB release credited Rajesh Jain as author of Mann Ki Baat: A Social Revolution on Radio – until former BJP leader Arun Shourie said Jain had privately told him he hadn’t written it but had merely read out a prepared speech at the launch, a version Jain then publicly confirmed.

BlueKraft titles have since travelled into the libraries of IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Gandhinagar, Jamia Millia Islamia and ILS Law College, and into NITI Aayog and the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses – and even into competitive-exam preparation, where one Intelligence Bureau mock test asked candidates to name the publisher of Ambedkar and Modi (answer: BlueKraft).

Manufacturing the youth, the celebrity, the documentary

It buys the look of a generation choosing, of stars endorsing, of journalism investigating – when each seems to be organised from the same desk.

During the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, BlueKraft ran around 10 Viksit Bharat Ambassador events; in the single month before polling, it held close to 20, across Mumbai, Delhi, Varanasi, Bengaluru, Coimbatore and Kolkata. Pitched as non-partisan youth festivals about a “developed India by 2047,” several ended – amid a national election – with film stars urging thousands of first-time voters to the booths.

At the Yuva Samvad at Banaras Hindu University on May 3, Vikrant Massey and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar addressed a reported 4,000 first-timers; Hitesh Jain and Mahaveer Jain’s wife, Neetu Jain, were seen performing the Ganga aarti alongside them. Five days later, at a “Run for Viksit Bharat” at Delhi University, actor Rajkummar Rao and badminton star Saina Nehwal addressed 8,000 students from 80-odd colleges. “We will do whatever is possible to take our country forward,” Rao told them, “so I personally urge each one of you to go and cast your vote.” The Mumbai event was chaired by Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and drew Ekta Kapoor, Subhash Ghai and Shekhar Suman.

Ravi Shankar, chief guest at eight events, said in Varanasi: “Not a single politician in any country has worked so much. In just 10 years, the progress India has achieved is beyond imagination.” In Bengaluru, on the temple at the heart of the BJP’s politics: “For many years, the Ram Mandir issue was used mainly for political purposes. Our Prime Minister took a firm decision and made such a beautiful temple in such a short time.” Hitesh Jain and Mahaveer Jain recurred across the stages; at Bengaluru, Hitesh Jain told the crowd that under Modi “we have become dynamic instead of dormant... one of the world’s top five economies.”

Consider the endorsement appearing as celebrity enthusiasm. Through Know The Nation – a YouTube channel Newslaundry found is run by BlueKraft though it never says so – and around the 100th episode of Mann Ki Baat, the foundation gathered film figures to praise the Prime Minister on camera.

Aamir Khan: “The Prime Minister has done a historic thing by starting the Mann Ki Baat programme.” Producer Dinesh Vijan: “We have such a great Prime Minister who is connecting with India.” Then Viacom18 chief Jyoti Deshpande, now a senior Reliance executive: “One is to have thought leadership like our Prime Minister has, and second is to implement it.” Rohit Shetty: “We are fortunate to have a leader whom everybody listens to.” Shahid Kapoor: “That is the sign of a great leader.” Ekta Kapoor: “It’s beautiful, it’s my favourite show.” All of this was then pushed out by the BJP’s own accounts.

The same channel’s other half runs the opposite direction, in Newslaundry’s assessment. Titles like “OCCRP aur Soros ka Congress Connection,” “Is the Hindenburg Report a Congress Toolkit?” and “Itihas Mein Dafan Nehru Ka Sach” point to a clear editorial line. Some content, including a recent claim that most followers of a derogatorily renamed opposition party are based in Pakistan, traffics in unverified assertions.

The channel has also run interviews timed to film releases that critics have called propagandist: Vivek Agnihotri for Bengal Files, Yami Gautam for Haq, Akshay Kumar for Kesari Chapter 2.

A sister platform, New India Junction, appears to carry the same DNA: shows hosted by anchors including Priyanka Deo and Richa Anirudh, with titles such as “PM Modi’s Birthday Special: 10 Things That Make Him a Yugpurush” and “Delhi blast row: The similarities between Congress and Pakistan’s narratives on India”.

Consider, finally, the documentary – the format that most insists on its own independence. Not every glossy Modi special can be tied to BlueKraft, and this report does not suggest otherwise. But a number of them carry one of its markers: a theme lifted from its books, a host drawn from its platforms, a push from its CEO, or a thread back to the same Bollywood network mapped in earlier parts of this series.

Modi: The Untold Story (2023), a five-part History TV18 series tracing his rise from Vadnagar, overlaps with the themes and material of BlueKraft’s own publications.

Statue of Unity: Ekta Ka Prateek, hosted by Akshay Kumar, was directed by Aanand L Rai – the same filmmaker who, with producer Mahaveer Jain, co-presented Chalo Jeete Hain, the film about Modi’s childhood (Read more about it in the previous parts of this series).

Mann Ki Baat: Bharat Ki Baat was anchored by Manoj Muntashir Shukla, the lyricist behind the BlueKraft-linked musical Mera Desh Pehle, and built around the very programme BlueKraft has published books on and campaigned around.

The Evacuation: Operation Ganga, on the Ukraine rescue, was promoted on social media by Akhilesh Mishra; Jal Dhara: Har Ghar Jal was fronted by Richa Anirudh, an anchor for BlueKraft’s New India Junction; and Dharohar Bharat Ki, on Doordarshan, was likewise pushed online by Mishra.

Dharohar Bharat Ki aired on state broadcaster Doordarshan while the rest aired on History TV18.

At least two were shared by the Prime Minister on his own social media accounts: Statue of Unity and The Evacuation: Operation Ganga. At least four of the six were promoted by the BJP’s official handles or its senior leaders, among them Amit Shah and Piyush Goyal. At least three – Mann Ki Baat: Bharat Ki Baat, The Evacuation and Dharohar Bharat Ki – were pushed online by Akhilesh Mishra.

Some of these were further amplified by state bodies such as the PIB and the AIR.

When Newslaundry filed RTIs with the I&B Ministry and Prasar Bharati seeking details of the commissioning and funding of these films, both institutions refused to answer.

Per MCA records, Colosceum Media, a Network18 subsidiary, made four of these documentaries in 2023-24 – and that year posted its highest-ever revenue, Rs 71.80 crore, after years of Roadies-and-Splitsvilla work. Though this timing is a correlation, not proof of cause.

The same may be the case for Anupam Kher Studio, which has no traceable BlueKraft link. It reported no revenue at all in 2018-19 or 2019-20, then climbed past Rs 8 crore by 2022-23, the year it made Lal Qile Se Goonj — Nehru Se Modi Tak, flattering to Modi and critical of Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

Colosceum Media, Network18, Anupam Kher Studio, and the broadcasters and producers named here were asked about the commissioning, financing and editorial control of these documentaries, and about any role played by BlueKraft.

Anupam Kher refused to comment. Any other response, if received, will be added to this report.

The conduit to Bollywood

All of this converges on the film industry – a convergence that has a recurring host.

For example, in October 2019, when Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Rajkumar Hirani, Boney Kapoor, Kangana Ranaut, Rakul Preet Singh and Jacqueline Fernandez, among others, gathered at the Prime Minister’s residence. BlueKraft’s New India Junction was granted access to film the stars’ impressions, anchor Priyanka Deo working the room; Hitesh Jain and producer Mahaveer Jain were present, alongside Modi’s OSD Hiren Joshi, to whom Hitesh Jain is considered close. The interviews New India Junction later published – with Fernandez, Hirani, Anurag Basu, Aanand L Rai and others – were, predictably, laudatory.

In 2025 came Mera Desh Pehle – The Untold Story of Narendra Modi, a musical biography credited to lyricist Manoj Muntashir Shukla and performed across Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar and Patna. The production recreated set-pieces of Modi’s story – his student years in Vadnagar, the Somnath-Ayodhya Rath Yatra, the Ekta Yatra to Kashmir, the Emergency, the building of the Ram Mandir – before audiences of chief ministers, Union ministers and the front rows of Bollywood: Akshay Kumar, Ranbir Kapoor, Vicky Kaushal, Janhvi Kapoor, Tiger Shroff, Raveena Tandon and Arjun Kapoor, with Mukesh and Anant Ambani in attendance. Stars supplied bytes the BJP’s handles shared.

Raveena Tandon: “The world has not seen a leader like him.” Shefali Shah: “When it comes to PM Modi, words are never enough. His greatest quality is his transparency.” Jackky Bhagnani: “I consider myself lucky as an Indian that he is our Prime Minister.” Filmmaker Ashoke Pandit: “Very few countries are fortunate to have such a powerful leader.” Senior BJP figures including J P Nadda, G Kishen Reddy and Amit Malviya promoted the show online.

Manoj Muntashir Shukla and the producers of Mera Desh Pehle were asked about BlueKraft’s role, if any, in conceiving, financing or organising the production. Responses will be added here.

Though it was publicly credited to Shukla, Hitesh Jain was present at every single staging – sharing the lamp-lighting with Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis in Mumbai, on stage with M Venkaiah Naidu and G Kishan Reddy in Hyderabad, with deputy chief ministers Vijay Kumar Sinha and Samrat Choudhary in Patna, in the front row beside Delhi CM Rekha Gupta, and next to Gujarat CM Bhupendra Patel in Gandhinagar. His presence on or beside the stage at every venue, and the production’s arc from Vadnagar to the PMO – tracking BlueKraft’s own books closely – suggest, in Newslaundry’s assessment, that this was less an independent production than an extension of the foundation’s content machine.

So strip away the employees posing as volunteers, the state ceremonies dressed as product launches, the election-timed youth festivals, the recycled testimonials, and the documentaries. And the hole at the center of this story stays. That the trail traces the machine, and the man it builds. Not who is paying for it all.

Newslaundry sent detailed questionnaires to BlueKraft Foundation, Hitesh Jain, Rajesh Jain and Akhilesh Mishra, and sought comment from the other individuals and entities named in this report. As of publication, no response had been received. This report will be updated if any response is received.

‘The film will make you Rs 100 cr, look at Kashmir Files’: Inside the quiet capture of BollywoodThe Bollywood pracharaks who found their place in Modi’s orbit

‘Feels like career over’: The online campaign to intimidate women part of CJP protest

Basant Kumar, Khushi Jaiswal — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 11:50:33 GMT

Even after PM Modi said he forgave those who abused him during the Cockroach Janata Party protest, the campaign against women and girls seen in viral videos did not stop.

(Gobindh VB)

A BJP MLA posts a video of a bleeding, weeping girl and tells his followers she is being taught a lesson. The video is actually from Varanasi, from a domestic violence case, and has nothing to do with the protest. It does not matter. The comments say: she didn’t get beaten enough.

In the two weeks since the Cockroach Janata Party’s July 20 Parliament march, more than half a dozen women and girls who appeared in clips from CJP protests have been identified across X, Instagram and Facebook – by an elected legislator, by Hindutva handles with large followings, by strangers who have sought to file police complaints and published home addresses. They face threats of rape and death.

There are other consequences too. A yoga instructor has lost many of her clients, a widowed mother has lost her tuition work, a teenager’s family home stands locked.

The case that has drawn the most television attention is that of Ruchika Singh, a 15-year-old filmed at Jantar Mantar using expletives against Prime Minister Modi, who now faces charges of defamation and “intentional insult to provoke breach of peace”. Late on Friday night, Modi posted a video saying he had been subjected to all kinds of abuse during the protests, and that he forgave everyone. She posted her own soon after – she had fallen under the influence of certain YouTubers that day, she said; she was ashamed; she apologised to him and to the country.

It did not end. Users began matching stills from the apology against footage from the protest – eyebrows, nose piercings, hair colour, teeth – to argue that the two were different girls. An account named Khetan Anup posted several such videos. “The two girls don’t look alike,” one caption read. “Something seems fishy here.”

The case against Ruchika

Ravi Negi, the BJP MLA from East Delhi's Patparganj constituency, known locally for turning up in Mayur Vihar to demand shopkeepers’ names, shared the Varanasi video on his social media account days after the march. He then shared a second video, filmed inside his own office, showing two or three men seated around him working out a girl’s address. She is a resident of Mandawali, in East Delhi, they establish. “First, we will have her summoned to the police station,” Negi says. In another video, he says: “We will definitely find the girl today or tomorrow. She will have to apologise in a public place. We will take legal action against her.”

The girl from Mandawali had raised questions about the gates of the Hanuman Temple in Connaught Place being shut for CJP protesters on July 20. Someone had filmed her asking. The clip was widely circulated. The temple priest has since told reporters the gates were closed because the atmosphere that day had turned volatile.

Negi is not the only one trying to trace these women protesters.

On July 29, a zero FIR was registered in Noida under Sections 352, 353(1) and 356(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. It names Ruchika Singh, whose video abusing the Prime Minister had spread widely online. She has since been discussed on several TV news channels.

The complainant is Smriti Singh, who identifies herself as a Supreme Court lawyer and as the Ghaziabad district president of the women’s wing of Raghuraj Pratap Singh’s Jansatta Loktantrik Dal. Raghuraj Pratap Singh is better known as Raja Bhaiya.

The FIR records Ruchika’s home address. Asked how she got it, Smriti Singh – a native of Ballia – said she found it on social media. Asked who had posted it there, she said, “I have forgotten who shared it.”

Her Instagram account carries videos of others discussing Ruchika; in some, men say they have located her address and that she has fled her home, and predict the police will find her soon.

Smriti Singh’s explanation for the FIR: “The language used was intolerable. Using such words for a person holding the office of Prime Minister is inappropriate for society. Our children also use social media; what would they learn from this? I am not opposed to the CJP’s movement, but during this campaign, several people emerged who appeared to use abusive language solely to increase their follower count. It is necessary to teach them a lesson.”

The Noida flat named in the FIR is reportedly locked. Amit Kumar Khari, SHO of Noida Expressway police station, earlier said: “People came to us to file the FIR, but the incident took place at Jantar Mantar. We registered the FIR and sent it to the Parliament Street Police Station.”

Some media reports claimed the Delhi Police is not filing an FIR. Indrajit, SHO of Parliament Street police station, refused to comment.

Saurav Das, national spokesperson of the Cockroach Janata Party, earlier said the criminal law had no business here: “If an individual feels their reputation has been harmed, they can file a defamation case."

Ruchika’s lawyer, Anil Singh, said the FIR gets basic facts wrong, beginning with her age. “Several details in the FIR, including the girl’s age, are recorded incorrectly. Her birthday was just yesterday, and she has now turned 15. Her mother is a widow who used to support the household by tutoring children, but she has lost that work as well following this entire controversy. The family’s financial condition is also poor.”

“As of now, we have neither received a notice nor had any official contact from the police. If a notice arrives in the future or further legal action is taken in this matter, we will decide our next steps accordingly.”

‘I have stopped checking my Instagram’

Nishu, from Ghaziabad, spoke at a protest against the paper leak. Her remark about the Prime Minister was neither obscene nor objectionable. It has cost her her account.

View this post on Instagram

An X user posting as ‘Boiled Anda’ — bio: “Sanghi”; cover photo: Yogi Adityanath, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah – shared her video and called her a prostitute, alleging she had abused and mocked the Prime Minister and served samosas under a “Modi’s tehravin” banner at a CJP protest.

She Abused PM Modi

Neeshu is now being kicked out by the House Owner pic.twitter.com/hQ9j6UKijT
— The Jaipur Dialogues (@JaipurDialogues) July 30, 2026

A separate story went around claiming Nishu had been evicted by her landlord over what she said at Jantar Mantar. Several handles amplified it. Nishu told Newslaundry the landlord had asked her to vacate about a month earlier – though, she says, he also told her, “Your views and ours differ.”

She has largely stopped using social media now. She opens the app to post a video, checks the likes, and closes it before the comments load. “I am inspired by Savitribai Phule. When she went to educate girls, cow dung, mud, and stones were thrown at her. If I am being abused on social media today, it doesn’t bother me much,” she said.

Some of the targeting has been systematic.

Neha, national president of the All India Students Association, drew this from the pro-Hindutva handle Jaipur Dialogues, which shared her video with the line: “I urge Bajrang Dal to teach her a lesson.” The same handle later posted a video of Ruchika, claiming she had been found.

An X user called Courageous posted photographs of Mayuri Malhotra giving an interview at the protest, along with her age, her educational background and other personal details, claiming she was abusing the prime minister “solely for fame”.

Yogi Sarkar 2027, a fan account for the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, shared a video of a young woman describing the placard she was holding and appealed to followers to identify her and launch a “search operation”. In the clip, a man with a red tilak on his forehead says: “Jai Shri Ram. If you are a true Hindu, identify this girl and shove this very banner into her…”

‘It feels as though my career is over’

Shraddha Singh made a video about RAF and police personnel during the CJP protest. She is 23, a yoga instructor, and she says she is now receiving rape and death threats. Newslaundry found abuse directed at her across platforms and at her mother.

An X user, ‘Serious Funny Guy’, who routinely posts videos of women influencers to target them, shared her clip with the caption: “Loving this meltdown”.

“People are constantly targeting me. I have confined myself to my home and have practically stopped stepping out. My life has changed completely. I am a yoga instructor, and I lost many clients after this controversy. It feels as though my career is over,” she told Newslaundry.

The abuse now runs under her yoga videos. “The very people who used to be inspired by me are now writing ‘Shame on you’. Many of them don’t even know what actually happened; they think I abused the Prime Minister.”

Some people, she says, have worked out where she lives. “I had made several videos in support of the police and posted many ordinary, positive videos as well, but no one watched them. People are judging me based on just one incident.”

She will not attend another protest. “I just want to live a normal life now.”

In Mumbai, Urvashi Palandurkar filmed herself singing and dancing at a CJP protest. There was no abuse in the clip, no profanity. The Chhattisgarh BJP posted it alongside footage of a child receiving an award from the President, asking: “A Gen-Z dancing to the legacy of Babur, or a Gen-Z bringing honor to Chhattisgarh? Which kind of Gen-Z would you choose?”

Urvashi replied that she does rather more than dance. She scored up to 93 percent in her Class 10 and 12 board exams.

CJP spokesperson Ratna Singh herself has said on X that she is receiving death threats and abuse.

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‘11-hour days, zero rest’: Delhi’s teachers say they are breaking under SIR duty

Suhasini Biswas — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 05:18:13 GMT

EC says SIR work is confined to non-teaching hours. Teachers working as BLOs describe days stretching till midnight and impact on classrooms.

“We are not computers or robots that we will do BLO work after teaching hours too,” says Rajat*, a higher secondary teacher in Ambedkar Nagar, South Delhi.

Rajat began work as a Booth Level Officer for the Special Intensive Revision of Delhi’s electoral rolls on June 30. His day now starts at 6 am and ends at midnight, sometimes 1 am – roughly 11 hours of it spent between classrooms and door-to-door enumeration. He is responsible for about 1,150 voters. Most, he says, either don’t know how to fill the enumeration form or don’t have the documents it asks for. He fields nearly a hundred calls a day, several of them from the same person. By the time he reaches school the next morning, he says, he has little capacity to teach.

Across Delhi, thousands of government school teachers have been pulled into the SIR as BLOs. Ambedkar Nagar, a single assembly constituency in South Delhi, shows what that has meant on the ground. Newslaundry spoke to 10 BLOs in the constituency, most of whom described sustained physical and mental exhaustion. They say they are working 11-hour days without compensation, sometimes despite being sick, even as their schools are running short-staffed.

On July 28, the Delhi High Court asked the Election Commission of India to “humanise their condition”. But BLOs claim nobody is listening.

‘There is nobody to listen to the teachers’

“I fell ill for two days, now I’m walking the lanes on medication,” says Satish*, another teacher and BLO in Ambedkar Nagar. Unlike Rajat, he has not been able to teach at all since the SIR began. “If I put in six hours of duty at school, how will I do the SIR work?” he asks. The two days he lost to illness have to be made up against a target of over 900 forms.

Preeti*, a teacher and BLO in Jawahar Nagar, says she has lost three kilos in a month. She too averages more than 11 hours a day – school runs till 1 pm, the commute home takes another hour, and by 4 pm she is out again. “I have a skin condition that got aggravated due to field visits in the sun and I have an eye operation pending. There is nobody to listen to the teachers,” she said.

Rakesh Kumar*, a BLO in Khanpur, was bitten by a dog while on field duty. He informed his Electoral Registration Officer and was taken to Safdarjung Hospital. He is back on the ground now, working through a backlog and worrying about his health.

“Keeping any human being like this for a month is both against human rights and labour law,” said Dipankar*. His only reliable window without calls from voters, he says, runs from 10.30 pm to 7 am.

Confusion about forms

Every BLO Newslaundry spoke to in Ambedkar Nagar said the voters in their booths had little idea about the SIR, which is why the forms keep coming back wrong.

The 2002 mapping requirement is the sharpest edge of it. “The ECI lets married women register their voter ID under their husband’s name, but when it comes to SIR’s progeny mapping, that husband’s name entry is irrelevant,” says Dipankar. It’s largely because many of these women voters were neither married nor on the list in 2002, he explains. “Women are instead required to trace and document their parents’ or grandparents’ electoral history, a paper trail many can’t produce.” Five of the ten BLOs raised the same problem, specifically for women who married into Delhi from outside.

Satish says older voters in his booth often have no photographs and are unsure of their own dates of birth. Like most BLOs, he ends up filling forms himself or sitting with voters while they do, and then uploading each one digitally. Rakesh claims the form is complex enough that he has returned to the same house seven or eight times to collect it.

“One person keeps calling six to seven times to clarify doubts regarding the forms. It is not their fault, but taking such calls continuously even during school hours drives me crazy,” says Rajat.

None of the BLOs disputed that the revision is part of their constitutional duty. But they said the time granted – nearly a month – is not enough for an exercise this complicated, and that there is no compensation for the additional work.

Threat of action

Ambedkar Nagar started the SIR with 46 teaching staff on BLO duty. By mid-July, that number had more than tripled. An order issued by the constituency’s ERO on July 14 requisitioned 149 teachers from roughly 17 government schools, redesignating all of them as Booth Level Volunteers. They were given till July 29, required to be available on all working days and, if needed, on holidays, with no leave granted without the ERO’s prior approval.

The order also invoked Section 32 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950 – three months to two years’ imprisonment for negligence, unauthorised absence, refusal to perform election duty, or delay – against people it called volunteers.

“It is written in such a way that everyone gets scared, and it is out of that fear alone that no one is able to raise their voice,” says Rajat.

Several districts in Delhi remain short of the 100 percent digitisation target, and the enumeration deadline has since been pushed from July 29 to August 8. On July 8, Anand Kumar Saroha, a 45-year-old maths teacher at a Sarvodaya Vidyalaya and a BLO supervisor, allegedly died by suicide. His family says his requests for medical leave from SIR duty had been repeatedly rejected.

The children left behind

On July 21, advocates Rajesh Kumar Gogna and Ashok Agarwal filed a public interest litigation in the Delhi High Court, naming the Ambedkar Nagar order among the practices they want reined in. The petition mentioned the impact on teaching and schoolchildren.

The petition cited a July 3 Times of India report that the entire regular teaching staff of a government school in Bhalswa – about 20 teachers for roughly 1,200 students – had been put on BLO duty, leaving 15 guest teachers to run 22 classes. It also carried a July 14 joint letter from the Vice-Principals’ and Principals’ Association warning that with full staffs withdrawn, schools cannot maintain basic child safety SOPs, which assume a level of staff presence that no longer exists.

Not one teacher from a private unaided school in Delhi has been requisitioned, the lawyers say; the burden falls entirely on government, municipal and government-aided schools that serve poor and lower middle-class families, while private schooling runs uninterrupted. They have asked the court to cap deployment at 10 percent of a school’s regular teaching staff at any time, with the rest scheduled outside school hours.

At the July 28 hearing, the Chief Justice pushed back on the ECI, noting that asking a teacher to work 11-hour days when they have children and families of their own means the Commission must “humanise their condition”. The bench was clear that it was not touching the ECI’s constitutional power to requisition teachers but insisting that the power stop short of an “unbearable burden”.

In its affidavit, the ECI maintained that deployment was confined to non-teaching hours, and that only 104 of the 149 teachers requisitioned in Ambedkar Nagar actually joined – about 14 percent of the schools’ combined teaching strength. It also pointed to a July 23 circular from the Delhi CEO’s office reissuing that instruction, two days after the PIL was filed.

But the petitioners claimed that the circular existed because the Directorate of Education had flagged teachers missing from classrooms for too long across Delhi’s 13 districts, and the lawyers note that roughly 10,000 teachers were returned to schools only after the petition forced the issue.

The teachers share the worry. “It’s the children who are suffering. Tell me, what are we supposed to do?” says Satish.

“I am specifically worried about my students who are in class 10. They have their board exams, but earlier I was posted for census duty and now SIR. They are my biggest worry,” says Rakesh.

Newslaundry reached out to ERO Poonam Prakash for comment over the phone and on email. This report will be updated if a response is received.

Names of BLOs have been changed to protect their identity.

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Woman journalist files FIR for assault, molestation during CJP protest coverage

Akankhya Rout — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:54:10 GMT

From being kicked on live TV to taking refuge in a bank, women reporters from TV, print and independent media recall the mob fury and online abuse they faced at the CJP protest.

A woman reporter with Times Now was allegedly kicked and struck on the head, and her cameraperson was manhandled, while both were reporting live from Kerala House during the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)-led protest march to Parliament on July 20.

The reporter, who spoke to Newslaundry on condition of anonymity, said protesters accused her of belonging to “Godi media” before the confrontation turned physical. An FIR was registered against the protesters on July 25.

She is not the only woman journalist to have taken legal recourse. A reporter with NDTV spoke about the harassment she faced while covering the same protest.

Between the two of them, the reporters’ accounts describe a pattern of heckling, physical assault, and – in the NDTV reporter’s case – her family being targeted alongside rape threats directed at her. Two more women journalists, from Navbharat Times and the independent outlet Molitics, also described similar hostility, suggesting the harassment was not limited to reporters from television networks protesters branded “Godi media”.

FIR filed after alleged assault near Kerala House

The Times Now reporter was on the ground giving a live report at around 2 pm on July 20 when protesters began questioning whether she belonged to “Godi Media” and made the situation hostile for her and her cameraperson. She said she did not retaliate.

“Please, all of you listen to what I am saying in my live (report). If you think something in it is wrong, let me know,” she told them.

She recalled protesters throwing water and bottles at other journalists present. “I asked my cameraperson, ‘If this happens to us, we will not go away. We are here to do our job’.”

As the confrontation escalated, she alleged: “I started saying something, and they blocked the camera view. Somebody grabbed my cameraperson’s neck from behind, someone kicked my right leg, and a person in a black shirt struck me on the head.”

Despite being offered the option to leave, she chose to stay. “I want to do this because, as a reporter, I want to cover it. My office told me I could leave, but I didn’t.”

The FIR was registered at the Parliament Street police station under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023 – 115(2), which penalises voluntarily causing hurt; 126(2), for wrongful restraint; and 74 and 3(5), which pertain to outraging a woman’s modesty.

Online abuse, targeting family

The NDTV reporter was subjected to abusive language while covering the protest on the ground, with hecklers saying things like “Dalal, suwar, you sleep with your father, your mother is …”, along with multiple rape and death threats online.

The harassment did not remain confined to her. Her mother was reportedly confronted at a public park by locals who allegedly told her, “Why did your daughter lie? She is a liar, Godi media.” Like her, journalists from other mainstream television channels have reported similar abuse from protesters branding them “Godi media”.

Chased through Rajiv Chowk, took shelter in a bank

Also on July 20, a Navbharat Times reporter was allegedly attacked by a group of protesters after arriving at Rajiv Chowk in the afternoon.

“When I reached the crowd, they started saying ‘Godi media’. It escalated to some manhandling, and then two to three men came to help me. I then moved toward the traffic, but they (the alleged assaulters) followed me until 6:30 pm,” she told Newsalundry.

She reportedly took refuge inside a Punjab National Bank branch for four hours, where she said the bank manager was helpful. A call to the PCR was met with assurances that a team would be sent, although it could not reach her immediately as protesters were allegedly pelting stones. The DCP eventually arrived at the location and escorted her to safety. She said she had tried to leave the bank twice but could not, with protesters waiting outside.

The abuse continued online.

Speaking to Newslaundry, she said, “I have received more than 300 threats on my social media, threatening to kill me, and these accounts don’t have any followers. What happened to me that day was traumatic. Social media trolling and threats are even more disturbing. That’s why I’m pissed off; these trolls are even dragging my family into this.”

Independent media reporters weren’t spared either

The harassment of women reporters at the CJP protest was not confined to those from mainstream television networks or print outlets protesters labelled “Godi media”. Journalists from independent outlets faced similar hostility.

On July 22, Gitanjali, a reporter with Molitics, was reporting from Sansad Marg when a group of students began shouting and urging people to move ahead to where the police were standing.

“I was reporting from Sansad Marg when suddenly some students came shouting and said, ‘Move ahead, move ahead.’ I stopped my PTC and went ahead to ask them, ‘Why are you provoking people?’ They said, ‘Our brother was beaten up, and we want justice,’ but then I said, ‘But you're causing problems for everyone.’ Then suddenly they started shouting 'Godi media'. I told them, ‘Check out our channel first’.”

A Newslaundry team was present at the scene as the confrontation unfolded, and one of our correspondents intervened to speak with the protesters directly.

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From ‘Godi media’ taunts to assault: The reporters caught in Jantar Mantar’s anger

An army aspirant, a bystander, a minor: The unanswered bullets of Siwan NEET protest after AK-47 video

Pushyamitra — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:23:28 GMT

Three people, including a minor, lie injured in Patna at government expense while the Siwan police insist that none of them were shot by AK-47s.

Dhiraj Kumar Gond is waiting outside Medanta Hospital in Patna. He is attending to his cousin Bullet Kumar Gond, who was shot at in Siwan during the Bihar Bandh protest against paper leaks on July 25.

“Bullet is preparing for police and army recruitment exams. He had already cleared the physical running test for the army. He told me that on that day, he had come to Siwan to get his caste and residential certificates made. He was on his way from the railway station to the district collectorate. When he reached ‘Adda Number Two’, he saw a clash unfolding between the police and protesters, with stone-pelting occurring from both sides. He thought he could slip past the crowd. But just then, a bullet struck his leg above the knee,” alleged Dhiraj, a resident of Dumarhar village in Siwan district.

“Then the police brought him here...Doctors said his bone was fractured. He underwent surgery and had a steel rod inserted.”

The 20-year-old is among three youths brought to the same hospital with gunshot injuries after Siwan district witnessed some of the most violent protests during the student-led Bihar Bandh against the NEET paper leak. According to various media reports, the police had fired at least 15 rounds that day – four from long-range weapons, three from pistols, and eight from an AK-47 fired by the SP’s personal security officer.

बिहार के सिवान में निहत्थे आंदोलनकारियों पर AK47 जैसे घातक हथियार का प्रयोग किसके कहने पर किया गया?

जो छात्र इसकी घातक फ़ायरिंग में घायल हुए हैं, उनके लिए पूरा देश चिंतित है।

पूरी दुनिया में फैले भारतीयों और ख़ासतौर से बिहार के मूल निवासियों के बीच इससे बेहद आक्रोश फैल गया… pic.twitter.com/rfSjeuyoKp
— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) July 27, 2026

The district administration had initially denied that any police firing had taken place. But allegations have continued to mount and with them, there has been a change in positions.

The Siwan SP, for example, told the Indian Express that “it wasn’t clear whether the bullets in all three cases were fired by the police or elsewhere”. He told Newslaundry that none of the three were hit by AK-47 fire. Though he later told the BBC that one of the youths was struck by a police bullet, without clarifying whether it was an AK-47.

The police maintain that the AK-47 firing took place at JP Chowk. The three injured youths were found at different locations: Akash and the minor were found at Hafiz Chowk, 1.5 km from JP Chowk, while Bullet was found injured near the Transit Police Station, two kilometres from JP Chowk.

If not the AK-47, were the bullets fired from other police-issued weapons – such as pistols or long-range rifles – that hit the three? Officials say the matter is under investigation.

Who are the victims?

The bullets hit 22-year-old Akash Kumar, 20-year-old Bullet, and a 17-year-old minor.

Bullet Kumar Gond comes from a family of agricultural labourers and belongs to a tribal community. He has three brothers: his elder brother, Rohit, works as a mechanic in Mumbai, while his younger brother operates a crane in Chhattisgarh. He also has an unmarried sister who lives at home while studying. Bullet is the only member of his lower-middle-class family pursuing a government job. He has been preparing for recruitment exams for the BSF, the Army, and the Bihar Police.

The two other injured youths from Siwan have since been discharged from hospital. One of them, Akash, hails from Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh. His fiancée is from Siwan, and he had travelled there to celebrate his birthday with her. He had stepped out to buy a cake when a clash broke out between the police and students. He says he was standing on the sidelines watching the commotion when a bullet struck his shoulder.

While Akash was undergoing treatment, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi spoke to him. After being discharged, he is currently staying at his fiancée's home in Siwan, as the hospital has asked him to return for a follow-up check-up in a week.

The third victim, a minor, works at a shop in Siwan. After his father died, the responsibility of supporting the family rests on his shoulders. His family lives in a rented house in the city. He was shot in the neck and has been advised not to speak. This account was provided by his caretaker, who looked after him at the Patna hospital. The caretaker said that after being discharged, the youth was sent to his maternal grandparents’ home, but he could not explain how the boy was shot, saying he had no information on the matter.

Lack of clarity in the police’s account

Tejashwi Yadav, Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Legislative Assembly, shared the video of the AK-47. Rahul Gandhi later posted about the issue on social media as well. The matter was brought up before the Supreme Court on July 28 too.

As the video spread, Siwan SP Puran Kumar Jha admitted that Constable Abhishek Kumar had fired the AK-47 in self-defence and suspended him. According to media reports, the constable is Jha’s own PSO.

District Magistrate Vivek Ranjan Maitreya called it “a major lapse” on the part of the police. “He had no orders. He should not have even fired in the air. He should not have carried such a weapon into a public setting,” Maitreya told the media. “As the SP stated, he was on his way elsewhere and got trapped there.”

Speaking to Newslaundry, Akhilesh Kumar, a former police officer who is now an Assistant Professor at Science College, Patna, called the police firing a clear breach of protocol.

“This is a blatant violation of the police manual. Police are issued weapons like the AK-47 so they can counter adversaries using automatic weapons during criminal encounters. How can you fire an AK-47 at protesters?” he asked.

“When I was in the police force, we were taught that if a mob turns violent, our objective should be to disperse it. This involves making announcements first; if that fails, using mild force with lathis. Subsequent options include water cannons and tear gas shells. Firing in the air is considered a last resort. Here, however, the AK-47 was fired directly, and aimed at the crowd,” added Akhilesh.

Speaking to Newslaundry, Jha ruled out AK-47 fire for all three. “We are certain that these three youths were not hit by AK-47 bullets, as the locations where they were injured fall under different police station jurisdictions. We are investigating how and where they were shot, and whether or not they were injured by police fire. Once the investigation is complete, I will personally hold a press conference to share the details.”

A press release issued by the Siwan Police on July 27 said Constable Abhishek Kumar, deployed near JP Chowk, had fired four rounds into the air to protect lives and government property after being surrounded by a mob. The viral video does not clarify the law and order situation the constable was faced with.

Political reactions

Newslaundry also spoke with political parties in Siwan and organisations involved in the protests. The bandh was jointly called by the student and youth wings of the CPI(ML).

Amarjit Kushwaha, a local party leader and former MLA, said his organisation’s protest at JP Chowk ended peacefully with a procession to Chandu Chowk by 12:15 pm. He claimed a separate, peaceful protest at Gandhi Maidan later turned violent, with shots fired there – an incident he suspects involved students affiliated with the RSS-BJP.

“The police should have exercised restraint in opening fire,” he said, alleging that instead, officers raided the homes of dozens from his organisation, including his own, breaking locks and confiscating phones.

Sushil Kumar, Siwan District Congress president, gave a different account of Gandhi Maidan. He said independent groups had organised a flags-free protest there, displaying only the Tricolour – until CPI(ML) members arrived carrying party flags, sparking a dispute. Police then lathi-charged the crowd, he said. Since Gandhi Maidan has only one exit, many students were injured jumping over its boundary wall.

“In the ensuing outrage, students began pelting stones at the police,” Sushil alleged. “In retaliation, the police opened fire... There was no justification for opening fire. Shots were fired from AK-47s and pistols... So, is the SP's blood the only blood that matters? Is the blood of these young people worthless?”

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Delhi Police owns the stone-laden truck after NL report. But their lawyer linked it to protesters in HCCJP protest and how Delhi Police broke the law

As DU reopens, students decode ‘thinly veiled threats’ and Jantar Mantar protests

Akankhya Rout — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:05:39 GMT

Amid library sign-ups, threat circulars, and minister resignations, incoming Delhi University students reflect on police crackdowns, paper leaks, and the growing cost of dissent.

There were fewer students than usual in Delhi University’s North Campus this week, as most of those who had joined days earlier were attending their orientation. You could find students across Hindu College, the Faculty of Law, Daulat Ram College, St Stephen's College and Hansraj College holding a piece of paper either registering for the library or completing their admission process, while actively following updates on the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which concluded its 36-day long protest on July 25.

The protest demanding accountability over a spate of examination paper leaks, including in NEET-UG, led to the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as education minister. He was replaced by Prahlad Joshi, who has since faced political backlash for his 2022 remarks defending the early release of 11 convicts in the Bilkis Bano gangrape case.

The protests also came against the backdrop of circulars from universities, including DU, JNU and Jamia Millia Islamia, discouraging students from participating in demonstrations at Jantar Mantar. DU’s circular, issued on July 23, warned that unlawful assemblies “may invite legal action” and urged students to “prioritise their safety and compliance with the law.”

Dear students and faculty, your safety matters to us. Please note that any unlawful assemblies or demonstrations at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, which are strictly regulated as per the directives of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, may invite legal action. Such activities can…
— University of Delhi (@UnivofDelhi) July 23, 2026

A march to Parliament on July 20 saw police come down hard on protesters with lathis, tear gas and pellet guns. The Centre agreed to all three of the CJP’s core demands on July 25 including the withdrawal of FIRs against protesters, but CJP warned the movement would resume if the “harassment of students” by the police continued.

A walk through these college campuses showed student organisations had set up stalls. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student arm of the RSS, and the Collective, a left-leaning student organisation, had stalls displaying placards, books, and small cards – an apparent effort to draw students into joining their organisations.

In a separate protest, the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of the Congress party, is holding an indefinite hunger strike outside the Faculty of Arts against the Vice Chancellor’s circular regarding the Jantar Mantar protest, with five participants taking part since 11 am on Wednesday, demanding an apology from the Vice Chancellor.

What everyday students are saying

A first-year English student from Hindu College, on her second day at the college, was holding an advertisement pamphlet and shared her thoughts on the CJP protest.

Speaking to Newslaundry on condition of anonymity, she said, “Protests are necessary. In this protest, people stood up for themselves. Whatever flagship programmes the government claimed to have run for students, they were not giving them.”

On the circular, she added, “It was a thinly veiled threat.”

A political science student from Prayagraj studying at Hindu College, who also spoke to Newslaundry on condition of anonymity, said, “Legitimate demands can force a resignation; at least they made the government answerable.” She did not join the protest because of her exams but has been closely observing what is happening.

“A system like DU tells students not to attend the protest, and in our class today, a faculty member said this generation is too intolerant and insecure. They are putting their ideology in the classroom. But when we tried to say something, they didn’t let us speak. From this, we can tell they are all part of the same system, just doing their job,” she added.

She further explained that this protest has at least made people aware of the “real issues”, and it has grown into a voice raised against injustice and intolerance. “If someone is held accountable through a resignation, that’s great. If this happens again, Gen Z will reunite. I think the police brutality happened because these officers are also fed up with the system and released their anger on the students,” she remarked.

Suman Mishra, a master’s student in history at Daulat Ram College, said that if students kept staying in activism and protesting to fix the system, their age would pass them by, leaving her to ask when they would actually get a job. Although she did not attend the protest herself due to her exams, she expressed support for it and remarked that she got all her information from her friend Shivanshu, who attended the march on July 20.

“I think in the protest, people acted as reporters – they gave live proof on Instagram, and that’s exactly what my whole algorithm showed me, which justified it as a peaceful protest. I also appeared for NET, and that paper was leaked too. Sonam Wangchuk participated, and his contribution to the protest was greater than CJP’s. It's a great thing that, for the first time, an education minister resigned from his position. CJP is still in its early stages, so they must be careful, or else it will create division,” she said.

Tesa, a first-year computer science student at St Stephen's who started college in the last few days along with four friends, said, “We haven’t heard good things about Prahlad Joshi. Everyone is under pressure from the government. Better education is the only demand or expectation students have. They should be held accountable for all of this.”

Chaitanya Sharma, a second-year law student who has not attended the protest, said the core issue was the paper leak, and that the protesters’ objectives were correct. She noted that students have died because of paper leaks, and spoke of the heavy financial burden of studying at coaching institutions. Her cousins, who were preparing for NEET, had their paper leaked too. She also asked, “Did anyone do a background check on Prahlad Joshi?”

Protesting against government’s retaliation

A new protest, organised by student groups including AISA, DSF, DSO, KYS, SFI and Collective among others, began at Jantar Mantar on Wednesday and ran into Thursday, concluding at 5.30 pm. It was a sign that the stir had resumed amid continuing harassment and repression of students who had participated in protests across different parts of India.

Sarthak of the Disha Students' Organisation (DSO) said, “It is clear that the government is trying every trick to retaliate against the students who came out to protest against the wave of paper leaks.” Students from left-leaning organisations, including DSO, AISA and SFI, have been arrested in Patna for participating in the protests, with an FIR also lodged against DSO’s national president. Naureen, an activist from DSO, said, “CJP should ask for a valid written assurance from the government, not a verbal one.”

On the circular issued by Delhi University, former Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) president and retired professor Nandita Narain said, “Universities have never issued circulars like this before,” while adding that she extended her support to this protest.

Pakiz Khan, a PhD scholar at JNU and president of the Democratic Students' Federation (DSF), along with Sunil, also a PhD student, said, “Because of the protest, new students are becoming sensitised and are gaining a critical lens more easily. These new students are now coming with questions about CJP and about what’s wrong with the education system.”

Neha Bora, activist and president of AISA, was on hunger strike alongside two other AISA students and Sonam Wangchuk, who was forcibly removed from the protest site by the Delhi Police on July 18, two days before the scheduled march to Parliament. The AISA students broke their fast when Pradhan resigned, while Wangchuk broke his fast in hospital.

Speaking at the Wednesday protest, days after ending her fast, Neha said, “Andolan tabhi mukalam samjhenge jab sab riha honge, tab tak movement adhura ha.” (We’ll only consider the movement successful once everyone is released; until then, it remains incomplete.) She added that a march is planned in Kolkata for protesters still detained by the police.

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A truck full of stones appeared near the CJP protest. We found out howFrom India Against Corruption to CJP: Abhinandan returns to Jantar Mantar

Delhi Police owns the stone-laden truck after NL report. But their lawyer linked it to protesters in HC

NL Team — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 14:15:53 GMT

The Delhi Police confirmed the truck was in their custody after a Newslaundry investigation.

After a Newslaundry investigation, Delhi Police have confirmed that the stone-laden truck seen near Jantar Mantar on the morning of the July 20 march was in their custody – a vehicle they had seized after a road accident and then moved. But in the court, the lawyer representing the police had invoked the same truck while mentioning violence by protesters.

It is clarified that claims alleging that *Truck No. HR63 E 6865 was deliberately deployed by Delhi Police near Jantar Mantar or outside any political party office* are false and misleading.

The truck was seized in FIR No. 65/2026 on *16.07.2026* in connection with a road…
— DCP New Delhi (@DCPNewDelhi) July 28, 2026

The truck first came into the public domain on July 20, hours before the Cockroach Janta Party was to march to Parliament. Their X handle posted a video on social media, showing a truck loaded with stones parked near Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in central Delhi.

Truck loaded with stones have been parked at Jantar Mantar.

Why??
What's there need Delhi police?? pic.twitter.com/b6PqesmAou
— Cockroach Janta Party (@CJP_for_India) July 20, 2026

Protesters had alleged the vehicle had been planted – either to frame them or to trigger violence they could then be blamed for. Abhijeet Dipke, the campaign’s founder, asked at the time whether the police were “orchestrating stone-pelting on the peaceful CJP protesters”.

The march ended in violence in which many were injured, including policemen. Several petitions alleging police excesses were subsequently filed before the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court.

In the Delhi High Court: ‘Cannot be believed prima facie’

On July 22, a division bench of the Delhi High Court comprising Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia was hearing such petitions.

Opposing the petitions, Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, appearing for both the Delhi Police and the Central government, argued that they rested on “suppression of facts” and on social media videos whose authenticity could not readily be accepted. He said the demonstrations had turned violent, and that there was video of police personnel being injured and police vehicles being damaged.

He turned to the truck. “There are videos which show that the crowd was indulging in stone-pelting. As admitted by the petitioners themselves, there was a truck loaded with stones and bricks at the place of the incident. To get away from the fact that these stones were accumulated by them, they are now saying they were brought by the police, which cannot be believed prima facie. Some persons in the mob might not have done it, but there are other elements in the mob which might have resorted to such acts. My lords are aware that if you are part of a mob or an unlawful assembly, anything and everything done by that unlawful assembly is attributed to you. That is a settled principle,” he submitted.

The court had directed the Delhi Police and the Union of India to file counter affidavits within four weeks and listed the matter for September 11.

That claim about the truck before the high court was made nearly a week before Delhi Police publicly confirmed that the truck had been in their custody and had been moved by them.

CJI: ‘Who is owning and disowning?’

The truck was also mentioned before a bench led by the Chief Justice of India.

This Tuesday, a three-judge bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana observed that a prima facie case had been made out for an independent investigation into allegations of police excesses against students and issued directions against coercive action. The bench issued notices to the Delhi government and to Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Maharashtra and West Bengal on a batch of petitions on police excesses against students.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appeared for the Delhi Police and the central government.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner Junaid Malik, drew the court’s attention to the truck.

CJI Surya Kant then said, “Who is owning and disowning (the truck)? Because they (the government counsel) are also saying the truck was brought by…”

Advocate Vrinda Grover intervened to question the police version, asking how such a vehicle could have crossed multiple police barricades if the area was under heavy security.

The Supreme Court will hear the matter on August 3, when the bench is likely to constitute a committee or a special investigation team to probe the allegations.

On Wednesday, after the police denial of the Newslaundry report, Vrinda Grover raised more questions, pointing to the government’s own submissions.

Delhi Police who is briefing the senior law officers of the Union of India?
It was the senior most lawyers of the Govt. who alluded to the presence of the truck at the protest.
Such submissions were made both before the Hon'ble Chief Justice of India and the Hon'ble Chief… https://t.co/Vnz0o47LHC
— Vrinda Grover (@vrindagrover) July 29, 2026

“Delhi Police who is briefing the senior law officers of the Union of India?” the Supreme Court advocate wrote on X.

“It was the senior most lawyers of the Govt. who alluded to the presence of the truck at the protest. Such submissions were made both before the Hon’ble Chief Justice of India and the Hon’ble Chief Justice of Delhi High Court,” she wrote.

CJP spokesperson: ‘We were told it was an MCD truck’

The Newslaundry investigation found that the truck had been in police custody all along. The vehicle had been seized four days before the march, on July 16, by the Parliament Street Police Station, after a crash that injured seven people.

After the report was published, the police said the truck had indeed been seized on July 16 after it was involved in an accident with a van, and that an FIR had been registered. It was initially parked near Parliament Street Police Station for safe custody because of space constraints, they said. It was subsequently emptied and relocated, the police added, as part of law and order arrangements.

They rejected claims that the truck was deliberately deployed near Jantar Mantar or outside the office of any political party as “completely baseless”. “Any claim linking the vehicle to a conspiracy against protesters is completely baseless.”

CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka alleged, “During the early hours of July 20, when we informed the police about the truck, we were laughed around and told that it’s an MCD truck carrying debris.”

Abhijeet Dipke said, “On the morning of the 20th, the police told us it was an NDMC truck.”

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Eyes wide shut: On July 20, ANI didn’t share a single X post on students injured in Delhi

Shinjinee Majumder — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 07:35:57 GMT

ANI posted 404 updates between 7 am and midnight on July 20, including 102 on the Chalo Sansad march. Not one mentioned injuries to students despite a violent police crackdown.

For decades, Asian News International (ANI) has occupied a near-monopoly in India’s television news ecosystem. With a business reportedly worth hundreds of crores, the agency supplies video footage and sound bites to news channels across the country and abroad. Its reporters are seemingly everywhere, often making ANI the only visual source for breaking news.

Yet on July 20, when Delhi Police launched a brutal crackdown on thousands of students protesting in Delhi, ANI had nothing to say. An analysis of ANI’s output shows that of the 404 X posts shared by the news agency that day, not a single one mentioned injury to protestors.

Headed by editor-in-chief Smita Prakash, ANI has long faced criticism for echoing government narratives. It has been accused in the past of “producing blatant propaganda for the state.” Its complete silence on the assault on students in the national Capital is likely to reinforce those criticisms.

ANI editor Smita Prakash interviewing Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 16, 2024 (Screengrab from YouTube)

July 20 in Delhi

The Cockroach Janta Party had called for a Chalo Sansad march on July 20, the opening day of Parliament’s monsoon session, after more than a month of continuous protests at Jantar Mantar demanding the education minister’s resignation.

Authorities responded with sweeping security measures. Section 163, prohibiting the assembly of five or more people, was imposed in the area. More than 5,000 police personnel were deployed, and five Delhi Metro stations near Parliament were shut. As protesters attempted to march towards Parliament in defiance of the restrictions, Delhi Police used lathis and tear gas to disperse the crowds.

By afternoon, videos of clashes from Connaught Place, Patel Chowk, Raisina Road, outside Parliament, India Gate, Ashoka Road and APJ Abdul Kalam Road had begun flooding social media.

The visuals were striking: protesters with pellet injuries, batons embedded with nails, tear gas shells being fired, minors allegedly being assaulted, and scores of young demonstrators being detained by the police. By sundown, parts of central Delhi resembled a war zone.

The scale of the injuries became clearer the following morning when The Indian Express reported that Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital had treated more than 100 CJP protestors, with patients requiring stitches, tetanus shots and wound dressings.

Despite the abundance of video evidence, Delhi Police denied using excessive force. In a post on X, it claimed that “no such incident has taken place” and urged the public not to “fall prey to any rumour.” The denial came even as footage showed plainclothes men wielding lathis alongside uniformed police personnel, several of whom were not wearing name badges.

Analysis of ANI’s Tweets from July 20

Alt News analysed all X posts by ANI on July 20, shared between 7 am and 11.59 pm. Of the 404 posts in this window, 218 (54 percent) covered national news, weather, crime, politics and other affairs. Of the remaining 186 (46 percent), 180 referenced Delhi. These posts were on whatever was happening in Delhi — the protest at Jantar Mantar, the students’ march, updates related to the beginning of the monsoon session etc. Six posts were about NEET-related protests from the rest of India. The entire dataset can be accessed here.

Of the 180 news updates from Delhi, 102 posts (56.66 percent) concerned the NEET issue or the protests, covering developments at Jantar Mantar through the day and statements by political leaders in Parliament on this. The remaining 78 (43.33 percent) covered other Delhi-based news — statements on Ram Mandir donation theft, restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood, external affairs minister S Jaishankar meeting the foreign minister of Panama etc.

Of the 102 NEET and protest-related posts, 41 reported developments from Jantar Mantar and the Chalo Sansad march, and 67 carried statements from political leaders. Not a single one mentioned the police and RAF action against students or injury to the protestors.

What did ANI (not) report?

As the analysis above shows, ANI published 41 posts that dealt directly with protest. A review of its coverage reveals a clear pattern.

The morning’s reportage focused largely on the security build-up: Deployment of the Rapid Action Force, the closure of Metro stations near Parliament, heightened security arrangements, updates on Sonam Wangchuk’s health, and his wife Gitanjali Angmo’s legal challenge to the Delhi High Court’s refusal to shift him from Safdarjung Hospital.

The first indication of unrest came at 10:20 am, when ANI reported that protesters had “clashed with RPF personnel” and that police had “used lathis for crowd control.” Between 10:48 am and 10:54 am, it also reported on a meeting between CJP spokesperson Saurav Das and a deputy commissioner of police.

But as the confrontation intensified — with rampant lathi charge and use of tear gas being documented by eyewitnesses, journalists on ground and numerous videos circulating online — ANI’s coverage fell silent. There was a gap of nearly an hour and a half, from 12:50 pm to 2:18 pm when there were no posts related to the protests on the streets. When the agency resumed posting, it merely reported that the protesters had “dispersed”, without describing the events that had led to their dispersal.

During this same period, that is between 12:50 pm and 2:18 pm on July 20, the official X handle of the CJP posted several videos of police using force against protestors. (Check here, here and here)

During the day, ANI also amplified two Delhi Police ‘fact checks’ denying claims that CJP leader Abhijeet Dipke had been detained and that a 12-year-old girl, along with dozens of others, had been assaulted.

As the day progressed, the focus of ANI’s coverage shifted almost entirely to injuries sustained by police personnel. At 2:56 pm, it reported that a sub-inspector had been injured. By 11:38 pm, the agency was carrying detailed figures stating that more than 118 police personnel had been injured, complete with a rank-wise breakdown. There was no mention of the number of students injured.

During today's violent protests, more than 118 police personnel from Delhi Police and Central Police Forces, including Special Commissioner, Joint Commissioner, Additional Commissioner, and Deputy Commissioner rank officers deployed on duty, sustained injuries.

Delhi Police… pic.twitter.com/DF5re1OtK2
— ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2026

ANI also published at least seven posts highlighting damage allegedly caused by protesters. In one post captioned “Aftermath of the clash between police and CJP protestors”, the agency showed damaged police vehicles and debris strewn across the road. All along, it chose not to document the injuries sustained by protesters or the force used on them.

#WATCH | Delhi | Aftermath of the clash between police and CJP protestors; visuals from Hanuman Mandir Road pic.twitter.com/qrrXt3BTFs
— ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2026

Two ANI posts attempted to show protesters throwing stones at Delhi Police personnel.

#WATCH | Delhi: Protesters pelt stones at Delhi Police personnel at Feroz Shah Road.#CJPProtest pic.twitter.com/CSCibKGpfT
— ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2026

Footage of police personnel allegedly throwing stones also went viral during the day. ANI did not cover it.

Why are the Police pelting stones at protesters? Was the brutal lathi charge not enough?

Shocking visuals coming from Delhi pic.twitter.com/8QF2SyG7gP
— Cockroach is Back (@Cockroachisback) July 20, 2026

Several outlets, including Alt News, reported the use of pellet guns by security personnel on youngsters. One of the injured may even lose an eye. As of July 28, ANI has still not put out a single report on the use of pellet guns or injuries caused by them on July 20, except for statements by Opposition leaders on the same. They did cover Rahul Gandhi’s press conference where one of the pellet gun victims was present, but they did not carry a single original report on the use of projectile action guns (PAGs).

Sahil Lochab at AIIMS trauma centre on July 22 | Photo: Ankit Jain

Several photos of injured police personnel were shared by ANI, starting from 3 pm.

Throughout the day, ANI focused on reporting from the Parliament, posting statements from various political leaders on various issues. Several politicians, including Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav, SP MP Dimple Yadav, Congress leader Pawan Khera, and Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Jha, spoke about the protest. They condemned the government’s alleged suppressing of dissent.

There were comments from BJP MPs like Hema Malini, who insisted that a problem should be discussed properly and “protesting in this manner won’t achieve anything”.

There were updates from outside the Capital too, including reports like the Unjha Cumin and Fennel receiving GI Tag, “strengthening Gujarat’s global spice identity” at 1:24 pm.

Unjha Cumin and Fennel receive GI Tag, strengthening Gujarat's global spice identity pic.twitter.com/pMOMA6llQC
— ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2026

At 12:55 pm, ANI posted about devotees gathering on the fifth day of the annual Rath Yatra in Puri, Odisha, to “witness the auspicious Hera Panchami ritual of Goddess Mahalaxmi and have darshan of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra, Devi Subhadra and Sudarshan at Sri Gundicha Temple”.

#WATCH | Puri, Odisha: Devotees gather on the fifth day of the annual Rath Yatra to witness the auspicious Hera Panchami ritual of Goddess Mahalaxmi and have darshan of Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra, Devi Subhadra and Sudarshan at Sri Gundicha Temple. pic.twitter.com/Tg2XEWdgep
— ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2026

At 3:09 pm, they reported on the Bihar government’s launch of the ‘Somnath Yatra’ under the Somnath Teerth Yatra Scheme to “facilitate devotees’ pilgrimage to the Somnath Temple in Gujarat”.

#WATCH | Bihar Government launches ‘Somnath Yatra’ under the Somnath Teerth Yatra Scheme. The initiative, spearheaded by the Department of Art, Culture & Youth, aims to facilitate devotees’ pilgrimage to the Somnath Temple in Gujarat.

Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary will… pic.twitter.com/nwhBAqBtuI
— ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2026

These posts appeared even as videos of police action against protesters flooded social media. ANI refused to report on that.

Its coverage that day raises a broader question: Where does editorial judgment end and narrative-building begin? Because the agency supplies much of the footage used by television news channels, its omissions can be as consequential as its reporting. By largely leaving out allegations of police excess during one of the biggest protest movements in years, the country’s dominant video news agency tried to define what the mainstream audience sees, and what it does not.

This story was originally published by Alt News and has been republished with permission.

ANI vs creators: Why is YouTube ignoring ‘safe harbour’ provisions in Indian law?

Rekha Gupta govt spent Rs 1.83 crore from tourism funds on DU’s Bhajan Clubbing

Samarth Grover — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 05:52:48 GMT

Some of the events were organised at a time protests were banned on campus.

The Delhi government’s tourism department spent Rs 1.83 crore on eight Bhajan Clubbing events organised across Delhi University colleges in February, according to an RTI obtained by Newslaundry.

The Rekha Gupta government has described Bhajan Clubbing as a “cultural renaissance”, saying the programmes, which blend devotion with modern music and “youthful energy”, have transformed college campuses. The expenditure was booked under the tourism promotion initiative “Delhi as a destination”.

The events were organised between February 10 and February 19. The first was held at Ramjas College on February 10, featuring the Leela Band, followed by Raghav Raja Band at Deen Dayal Upadhyay College on February 11.

On February 12, performances were held at Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma (ARSD) College by the Indian Music Collective and at Shaheed Sukhdev College by the Sadho Band. The following day, Rahassya Band performed at Shyam Lal College, while Keshavam Band performed at PGDAV College.

Keshavam Band returned for another performance at the University Stadium on February 16, before the final event was held at Shivaji College on February 19, featuring the Sam Band.

Clubbing allowed, protests banned

The events coincided with a politically turbulent fortnight at Delhi University.

Five of the eight programmes were held during the university’s inaugural Delhi University Literature Festival (DULF), organised from February 12 to 14. The official festival featured television anchors Anjana Om Kashyap, Rubika Liyaquat, Anand Narasimhan and ANI chief Smita Prakash, along with BJP leader Ram Madhav, Rajya Sabha MP Sudhanshu Trivedi, filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri and other speakers.

At the same time, the All India Students’ Association (AISA) organised a parallel “People’s Literature Festival – Samta Utsav”, calling the official event “a mouthpiece for regressive propaganda and communal rhetoric”. The parallel festival was marred by violence after historian Irfan Habib was targeted with a bucket of water and bricks were thrown from inside the Arts Faculty. The following day also witnessed clashes around AISA’s ‘Adhikar Rally’. Days later, on February 17, Delhi University imposed a month-long ban on protests.

Even as protests were prohibited, the university continued to highlight the “youthful energy” of Bhajan Clubbing events.

According to the RTI, the Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation (DTTDC) awarded the execution of the eight events to Total Multimedia Pvt Ltd for Rs 1,83,05,200 (exclusive of GST).

An Instagram reel posted by the agency shows Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra inaugurating the event. At the launch, Gupta said: “When Modi Ji spoke about this (Bhajan Clubbing) in his Mann Ki Baat, we were wondering where in Delhi could we do this. There could not be a better place than Delhi University.”

Why the tourism department funded these events

Speaking to Newslaundry, DTTDC Public Information Officer Sanjeev Chugh said the events were organised to engage DU students and introduce them to Indian culture.

“Well, this is done for the people of Delhi. DU has students and this is done to engage them, to tell them of our culture. That's why these venues were chosen.”

Asked how the events furthered the objectives of the tourism promotion initiative under which the expenditure was booked, Chugh reiterated that they were intended for Delhi’s students. When asked whether the events were open to the public, he said: “These were not open to the public. Considering the safety and security of male and female students, this is generally only for students.”

An invitation for the event held in Ramjas was reviewed by Newslaundry. It required prior registration and was only open to students and faculty members.

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Like avocado on jalebi: The manufactured appeal of ‘bhajan clubbing’

July 20 crackdown: One DCP approved pellets, another authorised firearms

Prateek Goyal, Basant Kumar — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 14:32:18 GMT

Section 70(1)(b) of the Delhi Police Act, 1978 empowers the government to confer the powers of an Executive Magistrate on police officers of the rank of ACP and above.

Picture for representation

A document seen by Newslaundry shows that a Deputy Commissioner of Police, acting with the powers of an Executive Magistrate, authorised the Rapid Action Force to use tear gas, lathi charge and firearms against protesters at Jantar Mantar on July 20.

This document is separate from a general diary entry at Parliament Street police station, reported earlier by The Hindu, which recorded a second officer of DCP rank authorising the use of the pellet gun against the same protest. Together, the two records indicate that authorisations for such force against the July 20 protest were issued by more than one officer of DCP rank.

The document names Sachin Sharma, DCP New Delhi, as the officer who issued the authorisation to disperse demonstrators taking part in the Chalo Sansad March, organised as part of the CJP protest in Delhi. It is titled “card to be provided by RAF/CRPF contingent officer” and is signed by Sharma.

It states: “I, Sachin Sharma, Executive Magistrate of the highest rank present at New Delhi District, Jantar Mantar, acting under Section 149 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (Section 130 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973), require No. 104., Rank Assistant Commandant Dilwar of Unit D/103, to disperse the unlawful assembly using gas/lathi charge/fire arms and/or to arrest and confine the persons forming part thereof (with the help of the armed forces under his command) at 5 pm (approximately) on 20/07/26 at 1700 hours in New Delhi district.”

The previously reported diary entry stated that DCP North Raja Bhatiya, on duty along with Deputy Commandant Satish Kumar Sangwan of B-108 RAF, ordered the RAF to act to control protesters during the CJP protest. According to the entry, the RAF used 55 non-electric shells, 15 electric shells, five tear smoke grenades, one anti-riot gun, and two rounds of plastic pellets during the operation.

Section 70(1)(b) of the Delhi Police Act, 1978 empowers the government to confer the powers of an Executive Magistrate on police officers of the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police and above. A DCP, being a rank above ACP, can therefore exercise those powers when duly empowered under the Act.

The authorisation is significant because RAF personnel do not take such decisions themselves. An RAF official deployed at Jantar Mantar had earlier told Newslaundry that the force cannot decide on its own to use a 12-bore pump-action gun; if the situation warrants it, the decision rests with the Executive Magistrate present at the spot. The official said the process involves formal documentation, including a written authorisation signed by the Executive Magistrate.

Newslaundry reached out to DCP Sachin Sharma to ask why he authorised the use of firearms against protesters. This report will be updated if a response is received.

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A truck full of stones appeared near the CJP protest. We found out how

Avdhesh Kumar — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 10:30:00 GMT

Newslaundry has traced the vehicle with its registration number. It was not a stray truck: the police had seized it four days earlier, after a pre-dawn crash on July 16 that injured seven people and led to an FIR. It was in the custody of the Parliament Street station’s malkhana.

(Prachi Dureja)

At 8 am on July 20, as the Cockroach Janta Party assembled at Jantar Mantar, its workers pointed to a truck loaded with stones on the road linking Sansad Marg to the protest site. Founder Abhijeet Dipke put out a video asking how it had crossed a police cordon. The stones, the CJP alleged, could be used to frame protesters or trigger violence. The police did not respond.

Truck loaded with stones have been parked at Jantar Mantar.

Why??
What's there need Delhi police?? pic.twitter.com/b6PqesmAou
— Cockroach Janta Party (@CJP_for_India) July 20, 2026

Newslaundry has traced the vehicle with its registration number. It was not a stray truck: the police had seized it four days earlier, after a pre-dawn crash on July 16 that injured seven people and led to an FIR. It was in the custody of the Parliament Street station’s malkhana – a department inside an Indian police station responsible for the storage of weapons, cash, seized properties, and crime scene evidence.

Over the following week, the dumper moved at least four times – to the protest site, to Bhalswa to be emptied, to the pavement outside the Indian Youth Congress office on Raisina Road, and then out of sight. Officers at the same station offer incompatible explanations.

ये लावारिस ट्रक 3 दिनों से रायसीना रोड संसद भवन के बिल्कुल सामने क्यों खड़ा है
इस बात का दिल्ली पुलिस के पास कोई जवाब नहीं था।#jantarmantarprotest #jantarmantar #delhiprotest pic.twitter.com/M94hfRg2PI
— Akshay Lakra (@akshaylakra17) July 25, 2026

The crash

The FIR records the time of the crash as 4.15 am on July 16. Truck HR63 E 6865, driven rashly and negligently, hit a Maruti Eeco, HR43 D 9778, at the Firoz Shah Road–Kasturba Gandhi Marg crossing in Lutyens’ Delhi. Seven people in the van were injured. Both vehicles were taken to the Parliament Street police station.

The truck was last registered to Keshav Kumar Sahni, who claimed it had been at the station since the crash. “This is a dumper truck that was carrying bricks and stones for construction work,” he said. “However, we sold this dumper about two months ago. I have the agreement.”

Charan Singh, a relative of the van’s current owner, deposited the damaged vehicle at the station. “When the accident happened, seven people were sitting in the vehicle. Everyone was injured,” he said. “It was a truck loaded with bricks and stones that hit our vehicle.”

Three versions from one station

An officer at Parliament Street, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “This truck was parked right outside Parliament Street, directly opposite where the van is standing now. But as soon as the video of the truck went viral on the morning of July 20, we took the truck to the Bhalswa area, emptied it, and brought it back and parked it here again.”

Mohit Bhati, the investigating officer, said the truck was initially shifted because protests were on and the station was short of space. Asked how it reached the Youth Congress office, he said: “We had seized the vehicle, and since then it has been in the possession of the malkhana department. I cannot tell you anything beyond this.”

The FIR records the time of the crash as 4.15 am on July 16. Truck HR63 E 6865, driven rashly and negligently, hit a Maruti Eeco, HR43 D 9778, at the Firoz Shah Road–Kasturba Gandhi Marg crossing in Lutyens’ Delhi. Seven people in the van were injured. Both vehicles were taken to the Parliament Street police station.

Sansad Marg SHO Neeraj Kumar contradicted both. The truck was emptied on July 19, he said – a day before the protest – and the videos in circulation are old footage. Asked how a seized vehicle ended up outside a party office, he said it made no difference where the police chose to park it.

Both timelines cannot hold. Either the truck was emptied on July 19, in which case it should not have been standing full of stones at Jantar Mantar the next morning, or it was emptied on July 20 because a video had gone viral.

Four days on Raisina Road?

On July 25, Indian Youth Congress workers released a video showing the same truck outside their office at 5, Raisina Road. It was towed at about noon that day, after repeated complaints and an argument with the police.

“That truck was standing outside our office for the last four days,” said IYC Delhi president Akshay Lakra. “We complained about it several times, and only then, after three days, was it removed.” Lakra claimed the police had parked it there and the police had removed it, and asked how a truck entered a zone barred to trucks and stood unclaimed for three days.

ये लावारिस ट्रक 3 दिनों से रायसीना रोड संसद भवन के बिल्कुल सामने क्यों खड़ा है
इस बात का दिल्ली पुलिस के पास कोई जवाब नहीं था।#jantarmantarprotest #jantarmantar #delhiprotest pic.twitter.com/M94hfRg2PI
— Akshay Lakra (@akshaylakra17) July 25, 2026

जंतर मंतर के पास इट पत्थर से भरा डंपर यूथ कांग्रेस दिल्ली कार्यालय की बाहर खड़ी है। pic.twitter.com/qdQSoeXkKt
— Ratan Ranjan (@RatanRanjan_) July 21, 2026

YouTuber Ratan Ranjan had flagged it four days earlier, posting from outside the office on the evening of July 21 that this was the Jantar Mantar dumper and the Delhi Police should investigate what it was doing there.

The damaged Maruti Eeco.

CJP had also alleged on July 20 that a damaged van left near the protest site would later be used to accuse protesters of vandalism. Staff at Parliament Street told us the van had been smashed by demonstrators, along with other police vehicles.

Their own FIR says otherwise – it is the Eeco from the July 16 crash. Charan Singh says it has also been moved. “Where I parked my vehicle, there were other broken-down vehicles standing too,” he said. “Where this vehicle is standing now, we did not park it there.”

Meanwhile, a malkhana policeman, speaking anonymously, said the truck is at the traffic pit on Kali Bari Marg.

It was not there when Newslaundry visited the spot.

Police response after report

After this report was published, the Delhi Police issued a clarification. In a post on X, the police said the truck had been moved to a secure location as part of law and order arrangements for the march. It added that any claim linking the vehicle to a conspiracy against the protesters was completely baseless.

Update on July 29: This report was updated with a police response on X.

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As cops target ‘offensive’ posts, Jantar Mantar reportage and reels are disappearing

Akankhya Rout — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 10:25:16 GMT

The BJP answered the protest’s anger and its viral visuals with PM Modi’s own selfie-style videos. Now, amid a crackdown on allegedly abusive posts, creators and journalists say their content is disappearing from Instagram.

(Prachi Dureja)

On July 26, hours after the Cockroach Janta Party called off its 36-day agitation, journalist Yaqut Ali uploaded an interview with Vijeta Dahiya, the outfit’s former spokesperson, on his Instagram account. The two discussed the trolling of Sonam Wangchuk. Neither said anything about the prime minister, abusive or otherwise.

Within minutes, the video could no longer be seen in India.

Ali reposted it from a second handle, Notyaqut, linking it to his main account through an Instagram collaboration. That copy was blocked too. He tried a third time without hashtags. It survived seven or eight hours before it went the same way. The notice told him the post was unavailable in India under the Information Technology Act.

This came amid a Delhi Police operation in which social media platforms are being told to remove posts carrying purportedly objectionable content about the prime minister. Its social media team, police say, is scanning platforms and has so far flagged 450 posts containing deepfake or AI-generated material.

The operation follows a wider contest over the protest’s online narrative. For weeks, the CJP had outmanoeuvred the BJP on Instagram with decentralised, creator-driven content, forcing the government to respond in the same idiom. By the end, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed young audiences through a selfie-style video.

The PM posted more selfie videos, one of which was briefly blocked by Meta on Facebook. Meta has apologised to the government, with the company attributing the removal to a technical glitch, suggest media reports.

The clamour around the PM’s video has at the moment drowned out restrictions faced in India by several other posts which contained nothing crude or abusive, with little clarity on the process followed.

What was restricted

Jyoti Yadav, another creator, saw videos blocked across three weeks. On July 5, a conversation with an AISA member about the hunger strike. On July 23, an interview with AAP’s Sanjay Singh on the paper leak. On July 25, a discussion with Bhim Army members, again on the paper leak. Each of the three revisited claims made during earlier agitations, including the farmers' protest. In one, a Bhim Army member called Hindutva activist Pinki Chaudhary, who faces over 30 FIRs, “nalayak”, and spoke of confronting him on Independence Day.

All three were made unavailable in India but they remain up on Facebook. The notice did not specify the department or agency that requested the action.

“I work as a freelancer and also upload content for my own personal account,” Yadav said. “I really want to upload good content other than anything agenda-driven, but I am afraid that any time this page can also be suspended.”

Gajendra Singh, who has run his page since September 2022 and also posts on his portal News Diggy, uploaded footage on July 20 of a protester injured in a police beating during the Parliament march that day. It was restricted in India the next day, with the notice citing Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act.

“Another video, where I took an interview of Swara Bhaskar, was also taken down,” Singh said. “It’s not available in India. Why is this wrong if we are uploading videos which are not even fabricated?”

Journalist and creator Raghav Trivedi posted a video on Sunday about an incident in Ghaziabad, where a man named Satyam Pandit attacked protesters returning from the CJP demonstration after asking them their religion. Trivedi asked why a police force willing to lathi-charge students was not acting against men who assault protesters. This video was an Instagram collaboration with news outlet Molitics.

His post was not restricted but removed. The notice said it “may show children being abused, even as memes, as a joke or to express outrage”.

Another video by Molitics, featuring Naveen Kumar of Article 19 and discussing pro-government media, was posted on Instagram on Saturday. It was taken down but has now been restored.

Abhinav Bisht, whose Instagram account followers surged from a few thousands to over 6 lakh as he posted reels linked to the CJP protest, saw his account suspended. It was restored hours later. Bisht claimed he had no idea why the action was taken. After he created a new account, thousands of followers rallied behind him, urging Instagram to restore his original profile.

View this post on Instagram

Meanwhile, in West Bengal’s Barasat, one Soumik Chatterji was arrested after a complaint lodged by a BJP leader after he posted a video showing him lighting a cigarette with a burning picture of PM Modi.

‘Creators reporting collapse in reach’

The Internet Freedom Foundation earlier raised questions for Meta and said that users “across India are reporting that reels and videos documenting the ongoing student protests in Delhi are being marked as ‘sensitive content’ on Instagram. This includes stories being shared by the CJP official account and for Anish Gawande. Story shares of these reels display an interstitial warning, and in several instances the ‘See reel’ option does not function at all. Creators are also reporting a sudden and unexplained collapse in reach, consistent with what is commonly described as, ‘shadowbanning’.”

It is not clear what legal power the police are exercising to take down posts. A police source quoted by PTI said: “After review of content uploaded during and after the protest, police will issue notices to remove such posts which are abusive in nature. An exercise to identify such content across different social media platforms is already underway.”

It’s not clear yet how many of these restrictions and takedowns mentioned in this report were carried out at the request of Delhi Police alone. Newslaundry sent questions to Delhi Police and Meta. This report will be updated if a response is received.

Apar Gupta, founding director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, said the actions should be made public. “This is how a digital-native generation, raised online, speaks about accountability. We demand that Delhi Police must publish every notice issued, and the legal provision invoked.”

It’s not clear yet how many of these restrictions and takedowns mentioned in this report were carried out at the request of Delhi Police alone. Newslaundry sent questions to Delhi Police and Meta. This report will be updated if a response is received.

The surveillance question

The restrictions come amid the Delhi High Court’s refusal to entertain a petition challenging intrusive surveillance at the Jantar Mantar protest. The court asked the petitioner to instead seek general guidelines.

Demonstrators had earlier photographed Ikshana, a mobile police surveillance van fitted with cameras on a telescopic mast, giving a 360-degree view of the crowd. This was apart from drone cameras and police personnel filming those who visited the spot.

A report from police commissioner Anurag Kumar to the government now says 2,873 people were examined over attacks on police and vandalism of vehicles, of whom 989 had antecedents in heinous offences, according to a Times of India report. They were identified using facial recognition cameras, CCTV, and video shot by police and the public. Permission, the report notes, had been granted only for a protest at Jantar Mantar, not a march to Parliament. The police said its investigation found that 101 people facing murder charges, 284 booked for dacoity and robbery, and 92 accused of sexual assault and other offences against women and children took part in violence during the July 20 march to Parliament.

The Internet Freedom Foundation has written to Delhi Police and filed RTIs on that use of facial recognition.

“The Delhi Police’s own replies to our RTIs, extracted after a second appeal before the Central Information Commission, establish that there is no rule governing its use of facial recognition technology (‘FRT’), that no privacy impact assessment was ever conducted, and that a similarity score of just 80% is treated as a positive match,” the foundation said. It had sent a legal representation to the Commissioner of Police seeking an immediate halt to live FRT at peaceful assemblies, deletion of protesters’ biometric data, and publication of any rules that exist. It has filed four fresh RTI applications, including one on the private vendor arrangement behind the Ikshana van.

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‘Breach of promise’: How BJP states cracked down on student protesters

Tarun Sahu, Abhishek Vijayan — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:13:05 GMT

The majority of the cases were slapped against protesters by the police in Bihar, Bengal and Assam, states where the BJP is in power.

The Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) called off student protests at Jantar Mantar after receiving assurances, among other things, that no criminal cases would be pursued against protesters across the country. And yet, police in various parts of the country booked protesters on various charges, including attempt-to-murder.

The majority of the cases were in Bihar, West Bengal and Assam, states where the BJP is in power. After the CJP threatened to revive their sit-in on Monday over reports of such police action, the Bihar and Assam governments said all cases will be dropped and protesters detained before 6 pm on July 26 will be released. West Bengal is yet to announce any such action.

Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation as education minister was just the first of four demands put forward by the CJP at the start of the protest. When the government accepted the CJP’s demands, Union minister JP Nadda had unambiguously stated that cases filed so far would be withdrawn nationwide. “The core of their four-point requirement was that no action or FIRs should be taken, and if any exist, they should be withdrawn whether filed by Delhi police or in any BJP-ruled state. We will provide them copies of those FIRs, and upon withdrawal, no further action will be pursued,” Nadda said.

On the ground, however, things looked different.

Assam

Arif-ul Islam, a 28-year-old law graduate and practising lawyer, was at a petrol pump in Chachal in Guwahati, Assam, when police made a random stop and inquiry. Chachal is a designated area where protests had been taking place, including on July 22. Arif had gone to drop a friend and was not part of the protest. "The police asked him what he was doing in the area. He identified himself and showed them his bar ID and other documents proving his identity. The police detained him and registered his arrest at 9 pm," said Aman Wadud, who represents Arif.

In the arrest memo, the police said that Arif was found to be allegedly “leading, inciting and instigating protests”. He was found at the site of the protest and was allegedly arguing with and obstructing on-duty police officers, it said.

The memo said investigations had revealed that many of the protesters were students, and the source and manner of potential funding had to be probed.

The police claimed that they would investigate whether there was foreign funding involved to pursue the resignation of public functionaries. Wadud, meanwhile, maintained that Arif did not take part in the protest.

A Guwahati-based woman lawyer had been attempting to mobilise help for those who have been detained by the police. "I have received at least 200 calls just to my number; the police crackdown has been widespread,” she said. She also said that the police had been going to the houses of juvenile protesters and threatening them for participating.

The lawyer said she was detained by the police while at a gathering on July 25, celebrating the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan. She accused the police of physical and sexual assault. “I was holding a national flag. A male police officer snatched the flag from me, and when I asked to have it back, a female officer attempted to twist my fingers. The same officer later tried to choke me after detaining me in a police bus. A male officer also groped my breasts. It still hurts today,” she said.

The FIRs had charged the protesters with assaulting public servants, unlawful assembly, criminal conspiracy and promoting secessionist or separatist feelings.

Chinmoy Deka, a 24-year-old youth picked up by Assam police was accused of "leading and influencing the protest gathering" and obstructing police, according to a lawyer.

Bihar

Amidst a state-wide Bandh on July 25, called in support of the student protests in Jantar Mantar, a police constable was captured on video purportedly firing an AK 47 rifle into a crowd of protesters. The constable, according to reports, was posted with the District Intelligence Unit (DIU) and was suspended immediately but questions have been raised about the firing using an automatic rifle.

There were also reports of widespread crackdowns on students.

On the night of July 26, in Patna alone, 86 people were sent to judicial custody on account of serious charges, including attempt-to-murder and causing hurt to deter a public servant from doing their duty.

Multiple lawyers who were present before the magistrate said despite repeated requests, the police refused to provide FIR copies to protesters or their counsel.

Patna police presented a large number of students before the judge in the midnight itself. They were brought to the judge's residence located at Chhajju Bagh in Patna. During this time, the number of students was around 200. On one side, the hearing was going on inside the judge's residence, while outside, the students' families were worried, waiting for their children to come out. However, after the hearing, the students were sent directly to Beur Central Jail in Patna.

At least seven FIRs were filed against student protesters on July 22. Some of these FIRs name anywhere between 80 and 90 people, lawyers said.

In Bihar, the first large-scale protest occurred on July 22. At 10 am, protesters gathered in large numbers at Gate number 10 of the Gandhi Maidan in Patna. When the police locked the gates to stop the march, the protesters became unruly, breaking a section of the gate in the process. As the march progressed, many were arrested following a lathi charge.

The police report at the Kotwali station in Patna on July 22 stated the following: “Around 04:30 pm, all the protesters (who had marched towards the Income Tax Roundabout) returned to Dakbungalow Crossing and, in a pre-planned manner, began vandalising vehicles passing through the crossing and physically assaulting the occupants. Efforts were made to reason with and stop the aggressive crowd in the procession, but the individuals in the crowd refused to listen to the administration. Instead, they became further agitated, tearing down banners and posters outside nearby shops, looting inside the shops, snatching items from the public, and pelting bricks and stones at them, creating an atmosphere of fear and panic among the public,” it said.

This complaint named 93 individuals, including sitting member of the legislative council Shashi Yadav, as well as student leaders of the All India Students Association (AISA), Disha Students’ Organisation (DSO) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist).

As per FIRs registered on July 22 by Sachivalay and Kotwali police stations, protesters had been booked for unlawful assembly and damaging public property.

On July 25, the protesters gathered at the Gandhi Maidan, leading to another round of arrests. “Some students who were inclined towards violent activities or were troublemakers pelted stones and left. Peaceful protesters, including several students from classes 9 and 10, were arrested. They have been kept at the police station since yesterday afternoon until now,” said Varuni Kumari, a leader of the DSO. She estimated that more than 250 students remain in police custody as of July 26. On July 27, the police named 145 accused. The rest, many of them juveniles and women protesters, were let off.

According to the FIR, rioting charges and unlawful assembly charges were slapped on protesters because the Model Code of Conduct was in effect in this area due to the Bankipore Assembly By-Election.

“Many of these students were simply on their way to coaching classes or had just stepped out, and were picked up. Without any consideration, genuine students who were not involved in any such activity were picked up. Right now, many parents don't even know where their children are,” she said. She also alleged that as of 10 pm on July 26, those in custody have not been provided copies of FIRs or produced before the magistrate.

“Gradually, approximately 5,000 individuals armed with lathis (sticks), rods, banners, and posters gathered around Gandhi Maidan, Exhibition Road, SP Verma Road, Bakarganj Road, Kargil Chowk, and other connecting routes and began vandalising property and staging demonstrations. This happened between 9 am and 5 pm,” the FIR said. Student leaders who were on the ground, however, maintained that the protest was dominated by students and that it was police violence that led to the situation worsening.

“From the facts above, it is self-evident that despite the Model Code of Conduct being in force, assembling unlawfully without permission pursuant to a criminal conspiracy, conducting violent protests continuously for 7–8 hours, and launching life-threatening attacks on police when stopped,” the FIR said. It did not clarify what aspects of the protest constitute a conspiracy.

The police invoked sections related to attempt-to-murder and rioting, apart from disobedience to orders by a public servant in the FIRs.

On the evening of July 27, following widespread criticism the Bihar government issued a clarification stating that it would not pursue actions against any protester arrested before 6 pm on July 26 Sunday and that all cases registered until now would be withdrawn.

In the timespan between July 25 noon when JP Nadda promised no action against protesters and evening of Monday, arrests and processing of inmates continued with many currently lodged in jails including the Beur jail in Patna.

Bengal

In Bengal, Chief Minister Suvendhu Adhikari called the protesters Jamaati fundamentalists who want to weaken India and create chaos. ‘None of these people belong to the movement. They are not students, they are goons,” he said, vowing strict action.

In the aftermath of a protest in Kolkata on July 25, Saturday, 14 persons were arrested by the Bengal police, 13 of whom were Muslim. The arrested are Mohammed Alamgir, Dipak Bhowmick, Zamir Ahmed, Mohsin Khan, Mohammed Moinuddin, Arshad Ali, Khalid Raza, Imran Ahmed, Irfan Kurshid, Mohammed Johiruddin Mal, Sheikh Mohammad Salman Hussein, Shahbaz Khan, Mohammad Afroz and Mohammad Azad. The West Bengal Public Safety and Control of Anti-Social Activities Act, 2026, commonly known as the Goonda Act, was invoked against these individuals.

The Goondas Act, invoked against the protesters, provides for preventive detention of persons involved in anti-social activities or those likely to engage in such activities. The Act allows the state to keep individuals in preventive detention for up to a year, without trial.

The Act has been challenged in the Calcutta High Court through Public Interest Litigation, but on July 12, the court refused an urgent hearing on the matter.

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‘Today is your last day’: Nearly 120 staff shown the door at India Today

Basant Kumar — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:28:26 GMT

Some employees say the cuts were explained as restructuring. Others claimed a list of more names is being drawn up.

“Today is your last day. Please submit your resignation.”

That, according to Anmol Kumar Mahto*, is what he was told last Wednesday, about an hour before his shift ended at the TV Today Network Limited office in Noida’s Sector 16. He had spent two years on the Hindi website team. He says he was called to a ground-floor cabin where his manager and an HR representative, Babita, were waiting.

Anmol claims HR already had his full-and-final settlement papers ready and he was told that the move was linked to a restructuring exercise. He submitted his resignation, surrendered his laptop and ID card, and left.

Employees say roughly 120 staff across company verticals were asked to resign between July 20 and July 24. Most of those affected were from the Aaj Tak Hindi website team, according to staff. Others were from camera operations, video editing, graphics, fact-checking, the Data Intelligence Unit and Aaj Tak Radio. Employees claim some in the India Today English web team were affected too.

Most of those approached resigned at the instance of HR and their managers, they claimed. Employees claimed those who refused to resign were terminated. Those who resigned received two months’ full salary while those terminated are to receive two months’ basic salary, they claimed.

Newslaundry could not independently verify these claims.

‘I wasn’t even allowed to meet colleagues’

The resignations were filed via Keka, a third-party HR platform used by the group. Employees say the platform lists several reasons for resignation, and that people selected different ones – some “restructuring,” some “others”. Asked to state a reason, some entered a standard resignation. Many, employees said, wrote that management had asked them to resign.

Raju Dev*, who says he has been with Aaj Tak for 13 years, claimed staff had been waiting on appraisals and that the forms had not been circulated. “I arrived at the office on Thursday. I had no idea that such an incident was about to occur. I was working when, like the others, I was asked to come downstairs. I was told to resign right then and there. No concrete reason was provided. After I submitted my resignation, my laptop and ID card were taken away, and I was told to leave.”

“I dedicated over 13 years of my life to this organisation, yet I wasn’t even allowed to meet my colleagues… I quietly returned home…They aren’t even giving a reason. If my performance had been poor, how would I have worked here for 13 years? I feel cheated.”

Naina Rajput, who says she had worked there four years, described a similar experience. “I was on a shift on July 21 that was scheduled to end at 2 pm. Around 12 pm, I was called downstairs, asked to resign, and told to go home. However, I had some belongings at my desk upstairs. I went to retrieve them, and that gave me a chance to say goodbye to my colleagues.”

Some staffers who came to the Noida office the next day to return remaining company assets such as laptops were stopped at the gate itself to deposit the same, another employee claimed.

Asked about the restructuring, a senior employee claimed the company is under financial pressure. The same employee said large-scale layoffs had been planned last year and averted, that management went ahead this time, and that the process is expected to continue.

The company, which operates brands such as Aaj Tak and India Today, had seen a sharp decline in profits in the last financial year, with its annual net profit plunging 81 percent to nearly Rs 14 crore. Reports suggested that among factors that influenced its performance were subdued advertising revenues, restructuring costs, and losses linked to its radio business. Its revenue fell 19 percent to nearly Rs 807 crore.

Staff still on the rolls claim the process has not stopped. They claimed six people associated with India Today magazine were let go in late May, following the same pattern. They said several high-salary staff left the group for NDTV not long ago, while those being let go now include people with much smaller salaries, even around Rs 30,000 a month.

Newslaundry emailed questions to the HR department, News Director Supriya Prasad, and Group Consulting Editor B V Rao. This report will be updated if a response is received.

*Names changed upon request

4 victims, 1 pattern: July 20 injuries put RAF’s ‘sensitive policing’ motto and manual under spotlight

Astha Savyasachi, Prateek Goyal — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 05:10:06 GMT

The Supreme Court is set to hear petitions against alleged police excesses during the July 20 march.

(Prachi Dureja)

Six days after the July 20 crackdown near Parliament, neither the CRPF nor its Rapid Action Force wing has clarified whether their personnel fired pellet guns at protesters. As of publication, the force has neither publicly confirmed nor denied their use, even as The Indian Express reported that an internal inquiry found that seven rounds were fired from a pellet gun.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear two petitions alleging police excesses as the Delhi Police faces questions over its response to the protest march called by the Cockroach Janta Party. But the force at the centre of the pellet injury allegations is the RAF – a CRPF wing trained in riot control, crowd management, negotiation and the use of less-lethal and minimum force. Its official motto is “Serving Humanity With Sensitive Policing”.

An RAF official deployed at Jantar Mantar, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said its personnel follow a “graded response” to control a “violent crowd”. “We first use lathis, then tear gas, followed by pellet guns if required,” he told Newslaundry. On the 12-bore pump-action shotgun, used to fire pellets, he said: “We do not use a 12-bore pump-action gun on our own. If the situation warrants its use, an executive magistrate who is present at the spot authorises its usage. We never fire pellets without such authorisation.”

Set against the motto, that account and the force’s own guidelines are two things.

The first is a video from that afternoon, one of many circulating since, in which a man in the blue camouflage of the RAF can be seen firing a 12-bore pump-action shotgun outside the Pind Balluchi restaurant at the Regal cinema complex in Connaught Place.

The second is the pattern of injuries. At least four people suffered pellet-like injuries on July 20, and in every case Newslaundry reviewed, the wounds were above the waist – eyes, face, neck, shoulders, chest, arms and back. A 19-year-old student may permanently lose vision in his right eye. A 25-year-old still has a pellet lodged near a major blood vessel in his neck, too close to remove. A reporter is carrying an estimated 25 to 30 of them in his body.

Now consider the force’s own rulebook. The Ministry of Home Affairs' 2011 Standard Operating Procedures for handling public agitations with non-lethal measures state that where such fire is required, the line of fire should be kept below the waist to reduce fatalities. It was the same logic that led the CRPF to fit its pellet guns with muzzle deflectors in 2017, an attachment designed to push the spread downward, and to instruct personnel to aim low. Whatever was authorised on July 20, and by whom, the wounds it left were not where the protocol says they should have been.

Media reports indicate the RAF chief has told its personnel that the force gradient for crowd control was not adopted in accordance with the RAF training and standards on July 20 – the force is examining the matter.

SOP to handle unlawful assembly

So what follows is an account of the four cases, the graded-force protocol the RAF says it follows, and a decade in which the Union government has repeatedly promised alternatives to the pellet gun without ever retiring it.

Shaikh Irshad Mansoori

Location: Near Palika Bazar

Time: Around 5 pm

Shaikh Irshad Mansoori, a 25-year-old resident of Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, who works at a private firm in Gurugram, was among the first protesters reported to have sustained pellet injuries during the July 20 march. He was injured near Palika Bazar and admitted to Lady Hardinge Medical College, where doctors operated on July 21 to remove multiple pellets lodged in his face.

According to Mansoori, the projectile struck his left eyebrow and shattered, sending fragments into different parts of his face. He said doctors flagged three pellets as particularly dangerous: one in his neck, close to a nerve and a major blood vessel; another near the muscle controlling his left eye, which could have affected his eye movement; and the third one on the right side of his face, near the nose, inside the facial cavity.

Before the operation, hospital staff warned that injuries close to his eye carried a risk to his sight. Surgeons removed several pellets from his face and neck, but the one lodged in his neck could not be extracted because it was close to a major blood vessel.

Outlook journalist

Location: Palika Bazar

Time: Around 4 pm

An Outlook India reporter covering the July 20 protest was also injured near Palika Bazar. According to the publication, the security personnel raised a firearm in his direction. The reporter instinctively turned away and ran moments before it was discharged. He later recalled that the projectile struck his backpack and right arm, saying that had he not turned, it could have hit his chest or face.

Medical records prepared after the incident documented multiple puncture wounds on his right arm, while a clinical assessment at Safdarjung Hospital recorded 26 small, round wounds on the right side of his body, consistent with pellets striking at an oblique angle. The magazine published X-rays and photographs showing multiple pellet injuries in his arm. Subsequent reports, including his own account, stated that around 25–30 remained lodged in his body, with injuries extending to his right arm, chest and back.

Sahil Lochab

Location: Palika Bazar

Time: Around 3 pm

Sahil Lochab, a 19-year-old Delhi University student from Najafgarh who was preparing for a Delhi Police recruitment exam, was carrying the Tricolour at the front of the march when he heard an explosion near his face. He was admitted to the AIIMS Trauma Centre, where doctors performed surgery to remove multiple metallic pellet fragments from his right eye. According to his family, the doctors have warned that he only has a minimal chance of regaining vision in the eye and that he could suffer permanent blindness.

In addition to the eye injury, reports state that he sustained pellet injuries to his shoulders and torso.

Unidentified protester

A fourth protester with pellet-like injuries has also appeared in videos circulating widely on social media, including footage shared by Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair. Although the individual’s identity and medical records have not been publicly confirmed, the videos appear to show multiple pellet-like puncture wounds across the face and upper body.

No verified medical documentation is available to establish the precise locations or extent of the injuries. As with the other documented cases, the visible injuries appear to be above the waist, adding to calls for an independent inquiry into the reported use of pellet guns during the July 20 protest.

Human rights concerns

An army veteran and security expert, on the condition of anonymity, told us, “Discharge of firearms (even pellet guns) is the last resort. The crowd has to be warned before fire is opened. Police have to fire in the air to warn the crowd…Pellet guns can and have caused permanent blindness and grave injuries. It is only one step away from live rounds being fired. Weapons can only be discharged if there is a credible threat to the life of either security forces or civilians or grave national asset damage.”

Multiple videos appear to show Delhi Police personnel and Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel deployed during the July 20 protest without visible name tags on their uniforms. On this issue, he said, “The uniformed forces have to wear all elements of their uniform.”

International human rights organisations have often criticised the use of pellet-firing shotguns for crowd control because of their indiscriminate nature and the risk of causing severe eye injuries, blindness and death. In its reports on Kashmir, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) described pellet-firing shotguns as among the most dangerous weapons used by security forces and called for an immediate end to their use for crowd control.

The UN Human Rights Office’s 2020 Guidance on Less-Lethal Weapons in Law Enforcement states that metal pellets fired from shotguns should never be used because such multi-projectile weapons are inherently inaccurate and cannot, in general, comply with the principles of necessity and proportionality.

A decade of failed alternatives

The alleged use of pellet guns during the July 20 protest in Delhi revives a question the Union government has grappled with for nearly a decade: should the weapon be used for crowd control at all? Since the 2016 unrest in Kashmir, the government has repeatedly faced criticism for the injuries caused by pellet guns, explored multiple alternatives and modified the weapon itself. Yet, despite these efforts, pellet guns have remained part of the security forces' crowd-control arsenal.

Following widespread criticism after the 2016 unrest in Kashmir, the Union government initiated a series of efforts to identify less harmful alternatives. In July 2016, the Ministry of Home Affairs constituted a seven-member expert committee headed by T V S N Prasad, then joint secretary in the ministry. The committee comprised Atul Karwal (Inspector General, CRPF Srinagar), Rajeev Krishna (Inspector General, Operations, BSF), Rajesh Kumar (IPS, Jammu and Kashmir Police), Tushar Tripathy (Deputy Director General, Small Arms, Ordnance Factory Board), Dr Manjit Singh (Director, TBRL, Chandigarh) and Dr Naresh Bhatnagar (Professor, IIT Delhi).

It submitted its report on August 29, 2016 and recommended several alternatives to pellet guns, including PAVA (Pelargonic Acid Vanillyl Amide, or nonivamide) shells – a chilli-based munition intended to temporarily incapacitate crowds – as well as stun-lac shells, Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) and plastic tear-gas shells. Home Minister Rajnath Singh subsequently approved the use of PAVA shells, and the first consignments were sent to Jammu and Kashmir in September 2016.

However, CRPF officials later said PAVA shells were only partially effective in dispersing crowds. Rather than replacing pellet guns, the force continued to retain them while modifying the weapon to reduce the severity of injuries.

In 2017, the CRPF introduced a modified version of the 12-bore pump-action pellet gun fitted with a metal “deflector” – an attachment on the muzzle intended to direct pellets downward and reduce injuries above the abdomen. The force claimed the modification would reduce the chance of pellets rising above the point of aim from 40 percent to 2 percent and instructed personnel to aim below the waist.

However, a report by The New Indian Express challenged these claims. It reported that the deflector could block only a small fraction of the pellets and that even slight movement by the shooter could cause pellets aimed at the legs to strike the upper body. The publication also highlighted inconsistencies in the CRPF’s own claims.

Inspector General Atul Karwal, who also served on the MHA expert committee, said around 90 percent of pellets would hit below the waist, implying that roughly 10 percent could still strike above it. CRPF spokesperson Rajesh Yadav told The Caravan that the deflectors had been tested only in “static and ideal situations”, describing them as a local improvisation. He acknowledged that real-life deployment would be different from controlled testing.

The search for alternatives continued. In 2019, alongside earlier modifications to the pellet gun, DRDO unveiled a plastic bullet as another proposed alternative for crowd control. The ammunition was developed by the Terminal Ballistics Research Laboratory (TBRL), Chandigarh, and designed to be fired from the AK-47 and AK-56 rifles already used by the CRPF, allowing forces to switch ammunition without changing weapons.

In 2019, DRDO showcased the plastic bullet at the 106th Indian Science Congress in Jalandhar. Speaking at the event, Dr Manjit Singh said, “A solution was needed for the notorious pellet gun.” DRDO Chairman G Satheesh Reddy said the new ammunition was “500 times less injurious” than conventional pellet rounds. This weapon should not be confused with the introduction of plastic-tipped pellets, which remained compatible with the 12-bore pump-action pellet gun and were intended only to reduce skin penetration.

Despite the repeated announcements of alternatives after 2016, pellet guns were never phased out. A Jammu and Kashmir government spokesperson told Al Jazeera that a decision had been taken to phase out pellet guns, but this was never implemented. In an affidavit filed before the Jammu and Kashmir High Court in response to a public interest litigation seeking a ban on pellet guns, the CRPF argued that withdrawing the weapon would leave personnel with no option but to use rifles, potentially causing more fatalities. Pellet guns therefore remained part of the force’s crowd-control arsenal.

Over time, allegations of pellet gun use also spread beyond Jammu and Kashmir.

During the ethnic violence in Manipur in September 2023, students and civil society groups alleged that security forces, including the Rapid Action Force, used pellet guns against protesters, leaving hundreds injured, including several with pellet wounds. Similar allegations surfaced during the farmers' protests at the Shambhu and Khanauri borders in February 2024, with farmers and Punjab officials alleging the use of pellet guns while Haryana Police denied the claim.

The allegations surrounding the July 2026 protest in Delhi therefore represent the first reported instance of pellet guns being used for crowd control in the national capital.

Throughout this period, the Ministry of Home Affairs has maintained that pellet guns are intended only as a measure of last resort. In replies to Parliament, the ministry has said security forces are expected to escalate through warnings, tear-smoke shells, PAVA shells and grenades, and STUN-LAC munitions before resorting to pellet guns, and only when these measures fail to disperse a violent crowd. This is consistent with the Ministry’s 2011 SOP.

Against this backdrop, the events of July 20 raise important questions about the use of pellet guns. The issue is not merely whether pellet guns were fired, but whether the circumstances justified their use and whether the safeguards laid down by the government itself were followed.

Speaking on the July 20 action, former home secretary Gopal Krishna Pillai said, “I remember very clearly that the decision in the ministry was that pellet guns should not be used because they cause random damage. When fired from a distance, the pellets spread and, instead of hitting the legs, they can strike the face.”

“There is no evidence that the police were being overwhelmed or that the crowd was going to attack them. From what little I have seen, it appears to have been a crowd-management failure. The protesters were funnelled between barricades, squeezed from the front and back, and then tear gas created panic. I don’t know why water cannons were not used instead.”

Update: On August 3, the Supreme Court said it will lay down a protocol for the use of pellet guns by law enforcement agencies while hearing a petition.

A document seen by Newslaundry earlier showed that a Deputy Commissioner of Police, acting with the powers of an Executive Magistrate, authorised the Rapid Action Force to use tear gas, lathi charge and firearms against protesters at Jantar Mantar on July 20. This document was separate from a general diary entry at Parliament Street police station, which recorded a second officer of DCP rank authorising the use of the pellet gun against the same protest. Together, the two records indicated that authorisations for such force against the July 20 protest were issued by more than one officer of DCP rank.

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Govt vows fast-track courts for paper leaks. Existing ones have 2,49,000 pending cases

Karthik Madhavapeddi, IndiaSpend — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 03:30:00 GMT

Researchers say paper-leak cases need immense human and technical intelligence, but police and forensic agencies face a resource crunch

On July 20, students attempted to march to Parliament, demanding accountability for paper leaks.

“Nothing is more important than the welfare and future of our youth!” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on July 23, adding that the government has “decided to set up fast-track courts to ensure swift and stringent punishment for those involved in paper leaks”.

That same day, the Union government told the Rajya Sabha that by April 2026, 775 fast-track special courts—including 398 exclusive courts set up to deal with cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act—had more than 2,49,000 pending cases.

The Prime Minister’s statement came three days after students took out a march from the protest site at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to the Parliament demanding accountability for paper leaks. Police and Rapid Action Forces baton-charged the protestors and fired tear-gas shells, and reports suggest tens of protestors sustained injuries. Some of the injured allege the use of pellet guns by personnel, while the police have denied this claim, stating that “Delhi Police neither possess pellet guns nor do they use them in the ongoing protest”.

Fast track courts were first recommended by the Eleventh Finance Commission in 2000 "to substantially bring down, if not eliminate, pendency in the district and subordinate courts over the next five years", as ISignal explained in December 2020.

Following recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission and a 2019 order from the Supreme Court in a writ petition, the Union government introduced a centrally sponsored scheme for the establishment of FTSCs in October 2019. Since the inception of the scheme in 2019 until March 2026, these FTSCs have disposed of 3,66,124 cases, a snapshot of the Department of Justice dashboard for FTSCs—which remains inaccessible at the time of publishing—shows.

ISignal reached out to the Union law ministry for comment on the learnings from the existing FTSCs, and how fast-track courts for paper leaks can be designed to make them more efficient. We will update this story when we receive a response.

‘Fast-track courts do not address the concern’

“How does this mechanism partially, marginally or even peripherally address the concern which has brought the youth of this country out on the streets,” asked Vrinda Grover, lawyer and human rights activist. “This is about trying to distract public discourse, which is asking difficult questions, but questions which impact the future of our youth.”

“The future and success of the country is interlinked to the future and success of the youth. What we will be as a country 50 years later depends on how highly professionally educated are youth,” she added.

Grover described the move as a gimmick, a quick fix to distract the conversation and show that the government is taking some action. “We have tried this, and the dismal result is that there is nothing fast about a fast-track court,” she added.

Grover cited the example of FTSCs in cases of rape and sexual violence to illustrate this. India’s criminal procedure code, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, stipulates that a trial should be completed within two months of a chargesheet being filed in such cases. On July 24, 2026, Grover made submissions in the case of the Manipur sectarian violence that occurred in May 2023. The Chief Justice of India noted that this is of concern, and proposed special courts to fast-track the hearings. “This is the fate of things that the country takes very seriously,” she added.

Further, despite stringent laws to deal with sexual violence and rape, crime is not abating or even diminishing, she noted. “If the law is not a deterrence, will it deter the next paper leak?”

“Merely having a faster judicial track is not enough to expedite the resolution of cases. What is equally important is the presence of a dedicated unit of investigative agencies—be it the police or others—to serve these FTSCs,” said Valay Singh, lead at India Justice Report.

“In the case of a paper leak, the evidence by its very nature will be highly complex,” Grover explained, adding that it will require rigorous and meticulous investigation involving digital, physical evidence. “The conversation we don't have is, how competent, skilled, relevant is the investigation that is done.”

But these departments are resource-strained. “Cyber crime prevention capacity is limited to a few police departments and central agencies,” said Singh. Cyber crimes have doubled from approximately 50,000 cases in 2020 to just over 100,000 in 2024, he noted, adding that, “Currently the existing cyber capacity in state police forces is simply inadequate.”

Delays and constraints

In a March 2026 response to the Lok Sabha, the government cited third-party evaluations conducted at the time of extending the scheme and said the reports “underscored the positive impact of the Scheme and recommended its continuation”.

But, that same month, it attributed delays to “availability of physical infrastructure, complexity of facts involved, nature of evidence, co-operation of stake holders viz. bar, investigation agencies, witnesses and litigants and proper application of rules and procedures. Other factors that lead to delay in disposal of cases include frequent adjournments.”

“The primary responsibility for the development of infrastructure facilities for District and Subordinate Courts in the States/UTs, rests with the State/UT Governments,” the government told the Rajya Sabha on July 23, adding that under the centrally sponsored scheme for “Development of Infrastructure Facilities for District and Subordinate Courts”, it has provided an amount of Rs 4,519 crore to states during the 15th finance commission cycle. It listed five components of the scheme: court halls, residential units, lawyers’ halls, toilet complexes and digital computer rooms.

A November 2022 study, by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, which studied cases disposed of by 486 POCSO courts, found that on average, the courts took about 510 days—or about 17 months—to dispose of a case. In 2020, Delhi had the highest average case length at 1,284 days or about 42 months. This is six months shy of the time taken to complete a graduate degree.

The study found that POCSO courts were not able to meet the mandated timelines. This could be explained by special public prosecutors not being appointed or, in cases where they were appointed, they were handling other cases, leading to a resource crunch, said Jyotika Randhawa, senior resident fellow at Justice, Access, and Lowering Delays (JALDI) team at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.

Forensic departments take time to process evidence, and the police take time to file chargesheets, she explained, adding that these ancillary departments are also under-resourced.

“Too often, specialisations—fast-track courts, human rights courts, juvenile justice, consumer redressal systems, commercial courts—though recognised as aids to efficiency, fall short of desired outcomes for the same reasons that everyday courts fail: under-resourcing and overburden,” the 2025 India Justice Report noted.

As of July 23, 35 percent of the 13.9 million criminal cases pending across India’s district courts were delayed due to the unavailability of counsel, while in another 24 percent cases, the accused was absconding, according to the National Judicial Data Grid. Further, 17 percent were marked as delayed due to “witness”, and 11 percent were “stayed for reason”.

Scheme guidelines say each FTSC will have one judicial officer and seven support staff members, and that “additional charge of the FTSCs will not be given to any existing Judicial Officer or court staff”. In addition, they provide for engaging retired judicial officers to dispose of cases in the FTSCs.

In many instances, Randhawa said, other courts were redesignated as FTSCs and were handling other cases as well, leading to additional delays.

Grover agreed. “I have done cases in fast track courts, where the same court is then redesignated as fast track,” she said. “Then it carries the burden of two courts.”

The analysis of FTSCs’ working shows that they lack dedicated judges, and face a resource crunch in the form of infrastructure and IT services, as well as secretarial staff, said Singh.

“The Scheme initially envisaged targeted disposal of 1,66,882 cases of Rape and POCSO Act which included 1,60,989 cases of POCSO Act (as per the data collected from the High Courts as on 30.6.2019), within one year,” a 2023 statement from the ministry said during the extension of the scheme period. Any cases pending at the end of the scheme period will be transferred back to regular courts or other special courts as decided by the states/UTs, it said.

The way forward

The state needs to provide the judiciary with the resources and the capacity to fulfil the mandate of fast-track courts, said Randhawa. The government needs to make a realistic assessment of the budgets, the courtrooms and number of judges needed, based on the likely inflow of cases in order for them to be functional and effective, she added.

“Inter-state coordination, well-trained investigative officers, technical knowhow and procedural knowledge are the prerequisites for a subject like paper leaks,” said Singh. “Given that paper leaks happened through multiple middlemen and transactions were made through hard-to-trace modes, establishing a common link and unravelling the ‘mastermind’ will require immense human as well as technical intelligence.”

Singh cited the 2025 report to point out that there is a nearly 50 percent vacancy in posts of scientific officers in forensic labs, nationally. “In police, separation on investigative and law and order wings remains to be implemented on the ground, therefore, investigations remain poor and slow,” he explained.

This report is republished with permission from IndiaSpend, a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity.

Why two recent Delhi High Court orders should worry every journalistOver 1 lakh pending cases: Noida burned after years of silence in labour courts

Accountability, jobs, education reform: What Gen Z protesters want next after Pradhan’s resignation

Dikshya Koirala — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:31:50 GMT

Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation marked a major victory for the Jantar Mantar protest. But for many of those who spent days on the streets, it was only the first step towards accountability, education reform, and a broader political change.

Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as the education minister on Saturday afternoon. Soon, the organisers were asking everyone at Jantar Mantar to pack up and go home.

Vipin, a law graduate from Shegaon, Maharashtra, had a different word for what had just happened. A “ceasefire”. “This is only one chapter of a war that has been completed.”

The month-long sit-in over the NEET paper leaks had drawn students, lawyers, doctors, blue-collar workers and parents to the centre of Delhi. Along with Pradhan's resignation, the Cockroach Janta Party, which organised it, said the government had agreed to withdraw police cases against students and compensate the families of those who died by suicide.

Almost everyone at the site called that a win. But pressed on what came next, they had a longer list: an apology from the Delhi Police, accountability from the home minister for the July 20 crackdown, compensation and reform for all exam aspirants — and beyond that, jobs, free education, and a change in politics.

The first step, not the last

Pranita, 23, a journalism graduate now looking for a job, had come back to the ground despite having been tear-gassed on July 20. “It’s only the first step,” she said of the resignation. “Going forward, we shouldn’t treat this as just another incident that fades away.”

For her, the paper-leak scandal was inseparable from a larger crisis: graduates like her, degree in hand, still unable to find work that matched their qualifications. “It’s not just about education. It’s also about the job market.”

Sheetal Shukla, 23, a NIFT student from Rohini who had shown up almost every day since the sit-in began said “this is the first step of the stairs” and “we haven’t even scratched the surface”. But, “PM Modi was posting at 12 in the night to communicate with Gen Z. I think it’s huge that he even acknowledged,” she said, comparing the government’s response to the farmers’ protest.

Rudraksh, 32, a freelance filmmaker from Rajouri Garden who had been attending on and off since the protests began, said “there still need to be major reforms in the education sector”. “Ideally, we should demand the education minister”s resignation, the home minister’s resignation, and, of course, it would be great if the prime minister resigned too. But I know that’s an idealistic expectation. Realistically, this is not the end, it’s just a baby step.”

‘They shouldn’t be suspended, but terminated’

The demand that united the crowd on Saturday was that nobody had yet answered for July 20, when police used tear gas and a lathi-charge to clear protesters.

Riya, 26, who is preparing for a government teaching job, was part of the march. “People in plain clothes were beating, and women were mistreated,” she said. “Why did all of that happen? The home minister should also be held accountable.”

Vipin wanted more than an apology. Video of how police treated women protesters was “extremely disturbing,” he said, and officers who turned up without nameplates, in plain clothes, should not simply be suspended but terminated. “Only then will they stay within their limits.”

Mohd Junaid, 25, an advocate at the Delhi High Court who had spent three days shuttling between police stations helping people detained during the protests, said the police commissioner should apologise publicly and officers who mistreated women should face a departmental inquiry and appear in a court of law. He held the home minister to the same standard. “He is a commander. You cannot misbehave like this with the students.”

‘Leaders should be accountable’

For Junaid, the stakes were close to home. His cousin had been preparing for NEET for seven years and had been caught up in the leaks repeatedly. “I have seen his pain,” Junaid said. So the resignation mattered as a precedent. “For a democratic setup, accountability is very important,” he said. “One shouldn’t stay in a political position if you cannot take accountability.” He recalled hearing party members boast that the word “resignation” did not exist in their vocabulary.

Ajay Kumar, 36, an advocate from East Delhi, said the original demand had been met but an apology was still owed. “In a democratic country, if leaders can be elected and become prime minister, they should also be accountable to the people,” he said. He wanted a structural fix too – anyone wanting to become a political leader should first have to sit an exam themselves. “Only then will they truly understand the pain and struggles of students.”

Amal Shaju, 27, back from work in Mizoram after a month, connected the protest to grievances far from Delhi, invoking Manipur and what he called a “rigged system”. Whatever had been won here, he insisted, was “just a spark” that should not be allowed to fade.

Fifteen-year-old Azka, attending for the first time with her father, treated the whole episode as a test of the system. “The government keeps asking for votes in the name of democracy,” she said, “but there are also allegations of vote theft. If this is a democracy, then democratic values should be upheld.”

‘Compensation for lost time’

Underneath such demands sat a more personal wound – the leaks, and the years students had already spent preparing.

Dr Arshdeep Badhan, 23, had travelled from Amritsar with a volunteer medical team from the Five Rivers Heart Association, treating police and protesters alike, free of charge, since the day of the lathi-charge. Having sat NEET himself, he saw the issue as one of public safety. “We studied hard, took the exam honestly, and reached where we are today,” he said. “If future generations get into medical colleges by buying leaked papers or through unfair means, how will they treat patients? We are responsible for people’s lives.”

Rahul Pal, 23, counted the losses in rupees and years. “The government announces recruitment, students pay the application fee, travel to examination centres, and then the paper gets leaked and the examination is cancelled,” he said. “Their time is wasted, their money is wasted.” Against an unforgiving age limit for government recruitment, that time cannot be recovered. His demands were: free education for the coming year, reimbursement of fees, and compensation for lost time. If none of it came, he said “either the government should resign, or it should compensate students”.

For several protesters, the sit-in was a rehearsal for a different kind of politics.

Junaid argued that religious rhetoric had for years been used to keep people divided while those in power benefited. His hope was that education and health would replace religion as the country’s central political argument.

Shaheen Sheikh, 21, a journalism student from Kanpur affiliated with the student organisation AISF, had spent a month camped at the site. Coming from a background she described as not privileged, she said the protest’s deeper meaning was that a person’s background should never determine whether they deserve an education. “Education should be free in this country,” she said.

Amal Shaju, 27, back from work in Mizoram after a month, connected the protest to grievances far from Delhi, invoking Manipur and what he called a “rigged system”. Whatever had been won here, he insisted, was “just a spark” that should not be allowed to fade.

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The working class men who risked everything at Jantar Mantar

Dikshya Koirala — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:18:36 GMT

They lost income and faced bruises. Blue-collar workers who travelled from other states explain why they camped at Jantar Mantar.

“We are already living in constant misery and dying a slow death. It's better to die here.”

When Arun, a 27-year-old cobbler from Uttar Pradesh, said this at Jantar Mantar on Friday, he had no way of knowing what would happen just a day later.

On Saturday, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned, and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) called off its weeks-long agitation, declaring that the government had accepted all its demands. Protesters who had spent nights on the pavement started going home.

The movement’s public face, in the days that followed the July 20 police crackdown, was largely that of students, grieving and concerned parents, the CJP leadership, Sonam Wangchuk, young professionals and the influencers and content creators who turned Jantar Mantar into a live broadcast.

But standing shoulder to shoulder with them – sleeping on the same pavement, absorbing the same lathis – was another group that had gone comparatively unnoticed: plumbers, painters, masons, barbers, and cobblers, none of whom had any exam to sit for or any degree at stake.

They had the most to lose and the least to gain, but they showed up anyway.

This is their account of why.

‘Police were ruthless with us’

Speaking to Newslaundry, Arun showed his darkened bruises on his hand and leg from the police lathi charge on July 20.

“Even in a peaceful protest, they were so ruthless to us; I don’t know why,” he said. When asked if he is worried about detention, he added, “We are living in a country where I already feel like I am detained. We are unable to raise our voices or fight for our rights.”

He had been at Jantar Mantar for the past week. He was one of dozens of workers who travelled from across north India to join the CJP protests. Many of them travelled in groups ranging from 3 to 10 people. Some joined before July 20; others joined afterward, after seeing the police crackdown online. Several mentioned that word had spread mainly through Instagram.

‘Someone like me will die’

Mohammed Shahrukh Ansari, who works as a plumber, electrician, and construction labourer, and takes on loading and unloading work on the side, had been at the protest site since July 19. He was over 30 years old, well past the age of the students he had come to support, and he was careful to explain why that hadn't stopped him.

“I have come here as I have seen the problems and frustration of the youth. Tomorrow, it is very plausible I will face similar problems,” he said. “If tomorrow, because of the paper leak, someone illiterate becomes a doctor and messes up the system, then someone like me will die... Even my children’s future will be destroyed,” he said.

Shahrukh hadn’t told his family he was there. He had left home in Bahadurgarh, Haryana, and had slept at the protest site every night since. Sleeping at the protest site came with its issues. There was no designated space to take a shower, the washrooms were for public use and were not cleaned frequently, and there was an absence of basic supplies such as soap and trash bins. Yet, Shahrukh said he was there to stay.

What moved him most, he said, was what he saw on July 20, the day the police lathi-charged protesters. “Some people got head injuries. I saw someone get beaten on the stage; he fell while jumping over the barrier, and the police still kept hitting him with a lathi. This is wrong. This is authoritarian (tanashahi); that’s why I don't feel like going back home.”

He said he wasn’t afraid of what might come next.

The arithmetic of a lost wage

Showing up at Jantar Mantar was not free.

Shahrukh did the math out aloud: “Recently I earned Rs 500 and have already spent Rs 200. However, I am still left with Rs 200. Food is being provided at the protest site (Jantar Mantar) and I don’t have to buy my own food.”

Shiva, a 22-year-old labourer in Mumbai originally from Uttar Pradesh, travelled to Delhi for the first time in his life for the protest. He shrugged off the cost.

“I thought I could manage that later, but right now this is important for the country,” he said.

Jitendra, 22, lived in Azamgarh and cut hair for a living. He found out about the protest through Instagram reels and travelled to Delhi with his five other friends.

“I am losing money because I am here. What can I do? I have to come. If we don't come, then who will come?” His family, he claimed, told him to go.

Kishan, a mason from Gorakhpur who travelled in with four others, said the same, and added something more pointed. He had studied for a while before circumstances forced him to stop, which was partly why, he said, the future of other students mattered to him. “If, because of our presence, somebody’s future gets better, that’s enough for us.”

Detention, and the lack of fear of it

Almost none of the men interviewed treated the prospect of arrest as a deterrent. Vishal, a 25-year-old plumber and electrician from Narela, who had been coming back and forth since July 19, had already worked out what he thought would happen.

“I have heard that after detention they take you somewhere far and drop you off, so it won’t be a problem; I can come back again,” he said. He had told his family he was at the protest and was planning to stay a week, “but if my condition gets bad, then I’ll have to go back.”

Furqan Khan, not yet 20, had arrived from Aligarh the night before he was interviewed, against his mother's wishes. “That I have left in God’s hands. I am just going to be brave, even if there are 10 police officers or 20 police officers,” he said. He described himself as illiterate, and said he had come to speak up for his brother’s children. “I have nothing specific to tell the government; we are just raising our voices for our rights.”

Kishan, meanwhile, said he and the others hadn’t thought that far ahead, and that this was a fight for his friends who were then studying. “We have not thought of that. We just want our fight to be successful and for us to win. The education minister must resign, and a new education minister must come with people's support.”

‘Padhega India, tab hi toh badhega India’

Arun said, “I want the government to develop health and education in the country. The country will only be developed if the youths are educated. Only if India learns then India will grow (Padhega India, tab hi toh badhega India). The government must understand that even if they are not educated, they need to let those who want to be educated pursue it.”

He had kept his presence at the protest from them at first, worried about how his sister, who was still studying, would take it – and fearful that she could meet the same fate as those students who died by suicide following the NEET-UG paper leak this year.

“I am just scared that these kids killed themselves; the same incident doesn’t happen in my own home.”

Shahrukh was more direct about what he thought the state owed the youth of the country. “Our concerns are not being heard; it should happen soon. The concerns should have been addressed on the 20th itself because there was a large number of youths that day. The government should look at this and think that these are the youth of my country and that we need to do something for them. They used violence and tear gas, which was wrong. Youths need to get justice sooner because they haven't gotten any till now.”

A day later, Shahrukh’s demand was met. And when the announcement came, it belonged to the students as much as it did to all these workers.

(Dikshya Koirala is an editorial intern with Newslaundry.)

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Dharmendra Pradhan resigns under pressure from student protests

‘Nobody asked us to’: Meet the silent engine of the Jantar Mantar protest

Samarth Grover — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 05:02:03 GMT

While the leadership meets delegations, a massive, uncoordinated workforce of spontaneous volunteers is cleaning, guarding, and surviving the police crackdown at Jantar Mantar.

Despite the police action on July 20, protestors returned to Jantar Mantar to continue demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. There is still a crowd of nearly 10,000 to 15,000 people at the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest.

But running a protest is not easy. It is a volatile space and yet the massive crowd moves in lines, stands in queues, fans each other, trusts and helps each other. The protest site is being cleaned by people who don’t like trash strewn around. Anyone trying to incite the crowd is being asked to calm down.

To understand how the protest is being held together, Newslaundry spoke to the volunteers – both official and unofficial, revealing two parallel systems. One that runs on instinct. The other runs on coordination. Together, they keep the protest functioning.

The official hierarchy

Most volunteers we met in the crowd had not filled out any forms or signed up. They simply began helping wherever there was a gap.

The hierarchy goes like this: the CJP leadership, followed by 13 core team members, nearly 50 marshal coordinators, and over 100 current volunteers, explained Ram Chandel, a 32-year-old member of the core team.

“New students keep joining because sometimes volunteers get tired and need some time to recover. Almost 3,000 volunteers have helped us so far.”

There are several teams for running the protest smoothly. These include ground communication, crowd management, waste management, security, social media, food and medicine.

Ram explained that while CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and their spokespersons Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka are tasked with meeting prominent personalities or official delegations who come to show solidarity, the volunteers are tasked with bringing them in.

“I am currently managing the entry of media personnel. Everyone works in different departments. Most volunteers help each other out, while around 25 of the total 100 current volunteers have the authority to make decisions,” he added.

On being asked if the violence on July 20 could have been prevented, Ram said, “Yes, if we had more volunteers. But we were mostly managing through WhatsApp, and the government completely shut down the internet that day. We could not coordinate; we couldn’t contact kids near Bangla Sahib; we basically got stuck. Only a few people had walkie-talkies and the crowd was a lot – their batteries also drained.”

Ram Chandel, core member

According to Khushi Kumari, a 17-year-old marshal coordinator, every morning instructions are circulated through WhatsApp groups, assigning volunteers to various tasks. If a sudden need arises during the day, coordinators reassign volunteers on the ground. Each team has several heads who work in informal shifts, overseeing both official volunteers and those who spontaneously join in.

After the police action on July 20, the process also became more selective. Kumari now maintains a register of around 80 volunteers, marking stars next to those the organisers consider trustworthy enough to be deployed in sensitive areas. The core team also meets CJP spokespersons once a day before instructions are relayed to volunteers.

Khushi Kumari, a marshal coordinator

That structure, however, is not where most volunteers begin.

Twenty-three-year-old law student Aftab Singh spent his first three days simply helping outside the protest site. He registered his name as a volunteer and was called whenever extra hands were needed. Only later was he absorbed into the core team.

Today, he is one of three people overseeing security around the stage, where roughly 25 volunteers manage entry, crowd control and sound.

Aftab Singh, a core team member

Media personnel are allowed inside only after their identity cards are checked. Volunteers stationed outside the barricades alert the security team if any disruption develops, with information relayed through walkie-talkies introduced after Sonam Wangchuk was forcibly taken away by the Delhi Police on July 18.

A similar path eventually led 17-year-old Prince Kumar to a marshal coordinator badge.

“I am Prince Kumar, from Nawada, Bihar. I have been coming here for the past 8 days. I didn’t have to give my name anywhere for volunteering. In the beginning, when I came inside, I was told not to let people use expletive slogans, or incite the crowd for violence. So, we did that. Four days ago, they gave me this tag,” the 17-year-old said.

“My parents know I am here but they scolded me for coming here. I will show you the number of missed calls,” he added.

When this reporter asked him to inform them that he was fine, he said, “I told them I am fine but they are not understanding - wo andhbhakt hain (they are blind worshippers). Half the people who have come here have families with andhbhakts saying that Modi ji is their God. I know we need to try to make them understand too but there is no use. They don’t understand.”

Speaking of his responsibilities, he said, “Our responsibilities include crowd management – not to let people jump over the railing. Sometimes we have to remove them or tell them they can’t come in and they get offended at that, sometimes even utter expletives. Lekin hum seh lete hain. (But we bear it). If everybody is allowed to come here, it will become chaotic.”

Every day, about 30 to 40 core members and marshal coordinators meet to decide the day’s plan before instructions are passed on through WhatsApp groups.

Prince Kumar, a marshal coordinator

We saw some volunteers wearing neon green T-shirts that are issued by the core team. One of them, with his foot covered in plastic bags, told us, “I have been here since June 20 and have witnessed the whole protest unfold in front of my eyes. When there were any problematic elements, we used to hand them over to the police. How we have managed to keep this protest alive – only we, Dipke, and Sonam sir know.”

On being asked about his injured foot, 38-year-old Rakesh said, “I was standing in front of Dipke’s truck. When the police action began, a girl fell near us. We were trying to protect her but the police didn’t care and beat us anyway. During that, my toenail got uprooted.”

Explaining how he started volunteering, he said, “I came here because of Sonam Wangchuk. He doesn’t lack anything in this world but he sat on a hunger strike. I felt it was my duty to join. I saw the arrangements weren’t proper. All the food here also turns to waste. With such a big crowd, you also have to coordinate. So, I started helping them manage it. When they saw me helping out, they asked me to volunteer. I said that if you need a volunteer, I’m ready to help.”

Explaining further, he said, “Our volunteers have even swept the road outside. I contacted them on our waste management WhatsApp group, which has around 76 members. You must have seen a lot of trash near the entrance. I personally made sure to get it all packed and keep it in a corner.”

“Sir, humare CJI ne hume cockroach bola tha na. Lekin ye cockroach, gandagi ko karne nahi, gandagi saaf karne aaye hain.” (The Chief Justice of India called us cockroaches. But this cockroach doesn’t create filth, it cleans it.)

‘Nobody asked us to do this’

The protest site is barricaded from the front and the stage area is in the back with metal rails guarding it. There are two small gates at both ends.

Near the entrance, a dozen people form a human chain to funnel thousands through the barricades – mostly spontaneous, though one official volunteer stationed there can direct people to form it. Inside, someone hands out water and food. Another moves along the line, fanning people against the heat. Nobody appears to be in charge, yet the line keeps moving.

Among them is 22-year-old Divyansh Gautam, who has been returning every day since Sonam Wangchuk was forcibly removed from Jantar Mantar on July 18.

On being asked if he told anybody that he wanted to volunteer, he said, “Madad aap batake thodi karoge. (You don’t help by announcing it.) It is seva (service) in a way. All of us have been doing this since morning and don’t even need to invite anybody to do it.”

Divyansh Gautam, a volunteer

Similarly, a 17-year-old girl named Anshi Pandey from Bihar’s Kishanganj was collecting wet waste from the site and filling it in black bags. She was barefoot, without gloves, with dried food on her shirt and hands.

“Most media people have asked me which side I am on. But I am not from CJP or BJP or Congress. I am here for people who have faced problems and for those who are creating this garbage. The way this is being managed is not correct. This is not how a protest happens. There are rules and volunteers but the leadership has not made many,” she said.

On being asked if anybody asked her to clean, she said, “No, I came in the morning and saw how terribly the garbage had spread. It was spread till here,” she said, pointing to where we stood.

“We then got the washrooms cleaned. But they (organising team) are not being practical. Women need to use the washroom. I saw period blood in there and had to clean with my friends, some of them men. We were crying looking at all this. I am sad for the students but the protest needs to be managed better.”

‘I understand their pain’

Megha, a 20-year-old student pursuing her BTech degree in biotechnology from the Delhi Technical University, was seen picking trash near the stage. She has been coming to the site since June 20 – the day the protest became indefinite.

“I joined because I have taken the NEET and JEE paper. I know the kind of pressure that brings. My friends have given NEET as well – 2024 was our first attempt. Leaks have kept happening since then. My friends still haven’t cleared it and are depressed. They are my best friends but they have stopped talking to anyone. They say they feel guilty and ashamed that our peers have gone ahead and our college has not even started,” she explained.

Remembering her sibling, she said, “My brother is in class 12 right now. He is the same age as the kids who died by suicide. I have faced all this pain and pressure. I come from a lower-middle-class family so I know the pressure students feel when their parents take loans for their children’s education. The education system has been crumbling for a long time. At least there is some hope now – that maybe we can bring about a change.”

Megha, a volunteer

As we moved towards the exit, we saw Shabbir Ali, 32, fanning people standing in the exit line to protect them from the heat, and keeping the line in order.

“I run a medical store in Ghaziabad. So, I got medicines for about 500 students – painkillers, bandages, and creams, after what happened on Monday,” he said.

On being asked about how he started fanning people, Ali said, “Acha lag raha hai (It feels nice),” he smiled. “A lot of our brothers have joined here, some are distributing food, some are busy elsewhere. Nobody told me to manage this line. I saw it was becoming difficult to exit so I came here to keep the line straight.”

Shabbir Ali, a volunteer

Outside the main protest site on Janpath Road, we saw an ambulance. Suchitra, 32, owns an ambulance service and is providing medicines and ambulances free of cost.

“If anyone faces an emergency or if there is any casualty then I will be there to help them shift to a hospital. I have been doing this after what happened on Monday. Earlier, I was helping out inside. My husband and I run this company. He is a doctor and was here till 2 pm but had to go see a serious patient.”

Suchitra owns an ambulance service

While interviewing her, two girls with roses tucked behind their ears asked for gloves. “We need them to pick up the trash,” they told me, pointing to the new trash bags they were carrying.

While there is an official network of volunteers, the protest could not be sustained without the protestors, who themselves continue to keep this movement alive.

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Under shadow of lathis and barricades: The day the Modi govt finally engaged the CJP‘With Wangchuk gone, cops thought hope would die’: The weekend that changed the CJP protest

Delhi metro closures are hurting more than just commuters

Satyendra Kumar Choudhury — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 05:49:20 GMT

Entry and exit at several stations continue to be suspended for security reasons.

Watch on YouTube

For the third consecutive day, 16 Delhi Metro stations remain closed, disrupting the daily commute for thousands across the capital.

Office-goers are bearing the brunt, with long traffic jams, overcrowded roads, and limited transport alternatives. While interchanges remain open at Rajiv Chowk, Mandi House, and Central Secretariat, entry and exit at the affected stations continue to be suspended for security reasons.

Many commuters told us they had no prior information about the closures, while others complained of being charged inflated fares by auto-rickshaw drivers for even short distances. At the same time, the shutdown has also hurt the livelihoods of auto and cycle-rickshaw drivers who depend on metro footfall for their daily income.

Watch.

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They got beaten at the Parliament march. But they returned to Jantar Mantar

Akankhya Rout — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:03:18 GMT

Protesters report direct blows to the head and cops without nameplates beating them, but they return to the site to keep the demonstration alive.

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Protesters had gathered for a march to Parliament on July 20, stating that the demonstration would be peaceful. When it began at 9 am, the atmosphere was calm. However, after barricades were breached and protesters started moving forward, the police resorted to a lathi-charge and tear gas shelling.

We spoke to some of the protesters, who reported injuries ranging from head wounds to injuries on their arms and legs. Police protocol dictates that blows should not be aimed at the head, yet some of the protesters we interviewed had sustained head injuries.

Their injuries didn’t deter them. Many of the injured returned to the protest site. We also spoke to a member of the Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) core team, who confirmed that around 50–60 people who had sustained injuries on July 20 had come back to Jantar Mantar to show their support. Among them were students and UPSC aspirants who had travelled not only from Delhi but also from other states to take part.

Ahila, a native of West Bengal who is currently studying in Delhi, had come to support the protest march on July 20 and was demonstrating peacefully when she was caught in the lathi-charge, sustaining injuries to her arms and legs. She said her college reopens on July 28, and that she intends to stay on to support the movement until then.

Sonu Yadav, a native of Madhya Pradesh currently pursuing an MA in Political Science, has been at the site for the past ten days to support the protest. He said, “The police started lathi-charging the protesters without any provocation. Some officers were in plainclothes and lacked nameplates. We will stay here until our demands are met.”

Watch this ground report.

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Lathis, tear gas and injured protesters: The ‘Chalo Sansad’ crackdown in pictures

Fourth pellet-like injury after July 20 march: DU student’s family says he may lose an eye

Avdhesh Kumar — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:17:00 GMT

Sahil Lochab, a 22-year-old Delhi University student, has undergone eye surgery after sustaining pellet-like injuries during the July 20 march to Parliament. Delhi Police deny the use of pellet guns.

Sahil Lochab, a 22-year-old from Najafgarh, is undergoing treatment to save vision in his right eye. A student at Delhi University who works part-time and is preparing to sit the Delhi Police recruitment exam, he was part of the July 20 march, carrying the Tricolour, when – by his own account to his mother – he heard something explode near his face.

Three days on, he has had one eye surgery, and is scheduled for another, says his family. Doctors said the cause of the injuries was a pellet gun, according to his mother and his three friends who were with him that day.

Attempts to obtain medical documentation or comment from AIIMS Trauma Center, where Lochab is admitted, were unsuccessful.

Lochab is the fourth publicly reported case of pellet-like injuries from the July 20 protest. The other three are Sheikh Irshad Mansoori, a Jabalpur man being treated at Lady Hardinge Hospital; an Outlook reporter who was fired upon near Palika Bazar; and a fourth man whose injuries have circulated online, including via Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair.

Fake News because Delhi Police Denied it? They denied using it doesn't mean it was not used..It was RAF gear which used the pellet guns. pic.twitter.com/MKwxMrFvoP https://t.co/IFsVH4NZXy
— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) July 22, 2026

The Delhi Police have repeatedly denied that their personnel used pellet guns on July 20, beginning with their response to the first such injury, reported by The Hindu, and have since ‘fact-checked” the claim on X. Though the allegation pertains more to the Rapid Action Force – a Central Reserve Police Force wing that has pellet guns and is deployed in large numbers through the ongoing protests. Neither the CRPF nor the RAF has issued a public denial.

Read the story. It mentions that Delhi Police has denied using pellets. Pellet guns and shock-batons are part of RAF gear, which was working alongside Delhi Police and deployed in and around Jantar Mantar on July 20. RAF is a part of CRPF. The central armed police forces are… https://t.co/YPU18VGGO1
— Vijaita Singh (@vijaita) July 22, 2026

According to an analysis of footage carried out by The Wire, the location of the firing was near Palika Bazaar, with the sound and visuals confirming a gun was fired. “Experts have confirmed to The Wire that the guns being seen in videos and images of RAF personnel from July 20 are 12-bore pump-action rifles, colloquially called pellet guns,” read the report.

Newslaundry has sent questions to RAF IG Seema Dhundia. This report will be updated if a response is received.

‘Only when the bandage is removed will the situation become clear’

Thousands turned out for the protest called by the Cockroach Janata Party in the capital on July 20. Lochab went with his friends. He is now admitted on the sixth floor of the AIIMS Trauma Centre; his parents, relatives and the friends who were with him wait outside the emergency gate.

His mother, Jyoti Lochab, is deeply frightened. She says, “He is my only earning son and the eldest child in the family. He is pursuing a BA at Delhi University and also works part-time. He aspires to join the Delhi Police and is preparing for it.”

“Sahil, the eldest of three children, had gone to Jantar Mantar that day to join the protest. He told me he was waving a flag when he suddenly heard a sound like something exploding near his face; he doesn’t know what happened after that. The doctors told us Sahil was hit by a pellet gun, but they are neither giving us any paperwork nor showing us anything. They have already performed surgery on him and are saying another one is needed today. It seems his eye has been damaged…He currently has a bandage on; only when it is removed will the actual situation become clear.”

Shivam Reddy, 21, was among the friends who were with Lochab on the day of the march. “Due to the swelling crowd, we had fallen slightly behind Sahil. He was carrying the Tricolour and was walking at the very front, waving it. The police likely thought he was leading the protesters; there were about 100–150 people behind him.”

Reddy claims Lochab was hit by a pellet gun. Other protesters carried him to Lady Hardinge Hospital. What followed was a night of transfers.

“We kept rushing him from one hospital to another. From 4 pm on Tuesday until 4 am, we were running around trying to get him treated. We went to Lady Hardinge first; after administering first aid, they referred him to Safdarjung because he was bleeding heavily. When we reached Safdarjung, we stood waiting for about an hour and a half. After that, we brought him to AIIMS. Hours later, we were sent from the AIIMS Trauma Centre to the AIIMS RP-I Centre. It was there, at 4 am, that eye drops were finally administered to his eye for the first time. He couldn’t see anything out of his right eye, and he still cannot see anything.”

“He underwent eye surgery today. The pellet fragments that had lodged in his eye were removed today. The doctors have advised another surgery. They told us there is a one percent chance his vision might return, but otherwise, it is extremely unlikely. We haven’t been shown any documents yet; we haven’t even received his MLC (medico-legal case) report,” he says.

Arjun, 22, another friend, says, “We are students too; our exam papers are getting leaked. Why is the government treating us this way? What was the need for such brutality?”

“After Sahil was injured, it started raining and continued all night. Yet, we kept rushing from hospital to hospital with him in the rain, but his treatment wouldn’t begin. We were deeply distressed by this. Imagine, in such a critical condition, the patient was just moving around with us.”

Naman Reddy, 20, who also marched that day, met us at the hospital. “We study at Aryabhatta College. Sahil is a childhood friend; we live in the same neighbourhood and spend most of our time together. We were together that day as well. Sahil was targeted because he was leading a group.”

The other cases

On July 22, Outlook reported that one of its own reporters was fired upon by a weapon, with injuries matching a pellet gun.

The report said that medical records prepared after the incident documented multiple puncture wounds on his arm. Photographs reviewed by Outlook show several small injuries resembling pellet-like wounds, it said, publishing both the photographs and a medical report. That incident occurred near Palika Bazar – the same area where Sheikh Irshad Mansoori was injured. The reporter turned away from the firing personnel just as the shot was released, the magazine reports, narrowly avoiding his chest and face but sustaining severe injuries to his arm.

Mansoori, from Jabalpur, was operated on at Lady Hardinge Hospital on July 21. Pellets below his eyes were removed, but he might require another surgery for another pellet in his neck.

The hospital declined to provide details. Dr (Professor) Purnima Barua, Director of Lady Hardinge Medical College, told us in her office that the relevant information had already been given to DD News and ANI and that she did not wish to repeat it.

A friend who visited Mansoori on the sixth floor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said strict protocols have been in force since Union health minister J P Nadda’s visit to the hospital; Nadda also met Mansoori.

A doctor at Lady Hardinge said around 100 people were admitted there after the protest violence, including 20 to 25 police personnel, and that most have since been discharged.

The fourth case has been reported online by several handles, including Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair.

Pellets fired from these guns penetrate the skin when sprayed from a distance. They were last known to have been used during the 2024 farmers’ protest at the Khanauri and Shambhu borders on the Punjab-Haryana boundary; police denied their use then, while farm leaders alleged several people were injured. In 2023, they were used against protesters in ethnic-strife-torn Manipur, prompting widespread outrage. And in Jammu and Kashmir during the 2016 unrest, pellet guns left several people partially or fully blind.

In a reply to Parliament in 2018, the Union government said 17 protesters or other persons were killed by pellet guns in Jammu and Kashmir during 2016 and 2017. It declined to disclose further details, citing national security.

Read this to understand the controversy around the pellet gun in India.

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First a prankster, now a policeman: When smart glasses come to India’s protest sites

Karen Rebelo — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:06:49 GMT

When an online prankster secretly filmed Shubnam at a Delhi protest, it unleashed a torrent of transphobic harassment – revealing how wearable tech is being weaponised against vulnerable communities without consent.

Shubnam, who identifies as transfeminine, said they were in the middle of moving house in Delhi’s scorching 40 degrees Celsius-plus summer when they found out that a video of them telling a social media content creator to “f*** off” had gone viral.

The clip of their fleeting interaction at a trans rights protest was recorded without Shubnam’s knowledge or consent, using Meta’s AI (artificial intelligence) Ray-Ban smart glasses. It was filmed by a relatively unknown content creator on Instagram, who goes by the username Parley (@parley.96) and specialises in ragebait pranks.

The concerns the incident raised have only sharpened since. On July 20, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Sandeep Lamba – filmed slapping a woman protester during the march to Parliament, and since removed from the Jantar Mantar protest site – was seen wearing smart glasses at the protest site, this time with the camera in the hands of the state rather than a content creator. But Shubnam’s ordeal remains one of the most prominent examples yet of a user weaponising the glasses to capture imagery without consent, a practice journalists and tech policy experts have flagged as a major privacy risk, illustrating how wearable tech can facilitate the abuse of vulnerable groups.

With a shorn head and dressed in a turquoise green saree, Shubnam cut a striking figure at the protest on March 29, 2026, at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar grounds against the Transgender (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill, 2026. Trans activists slammed the bill as regressive, but Indian lawmakers passed it hastily anyway.

When Parley posted an edited version of the video in late May, Instagram’s algorithm propelled the post, triggering a wave of transphobic hate and memes, including AI-generated images likening Shubnam to a Hindi animated cartoon named ‘Ganji Chudail’ or bald witch.

Several right-wing pro-Hindutva X accounts downloaded the clip and shared it on the Elon Musk-owned platform in what seemed like a call for mass bullying. The clip had over five million views on Instagram alone before the platform quietly deleted it three weeks later, in late June.

“I was in the middle of shifting homes when this entire sh*t show went down,” said Shubnam, who works as a graphic designer and artist. “I was packing a giant carton when I got a text about that video on May 26, and then it just kept growing,” they said. Although the protest took place on March 29, Parley did not upload the edited clip until nearly two months later, in May – which is when it first came to Shubnam’s attention.

“House-hunting for trans people is quite a challenging task,” Shubnam said. “I was already quite mentally drained from the whole hunting and shifting, and this whole episode of virality just overloaded my brain at a time when it really needed some rest.”

Meta denied, then deleted

Meta, the Mark Zuckerberg-founded company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been leading the smart glasses space with its introduction as early as 2021. The glasses are made in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban and Oakley.

Meta roped in cricketer Virat Kohli to promote its latest wearable tech. The glasses allow users to take photos, capture video, respond to voice commands, and feature a built-in mic and speaker. The Gen 1 version starts at Rs 22,400, whereas the latest Gen 2 version is upward of nearly Rs 40,000.

When several Instagram users in India reported the video, the platform initially said it did not violate its Community Standards, contradicting its own guidelines on bullying and harassment.

With several LGBTQIA+ individuals and pages rallying to get it removed, Instagram ultimately took down the video. But not before it had already amassed millions of views across different platforms and painted a virtual target on Shubnam.

Algorithm suggests

Nipunika Sachdeva, who also attended the March 29 protest in Delhi in solidarity and who appears briefly in the same video surreptitiously shot by Parley, said they weren’t surprised by the platform’s initial refusal to budge.

“It wasn’t surprising, honestly – like, we knew it probably wouldn’t be taken down,” said Nipunika, who works as a community manager with Youth Ki Awaaz.

“...By now, [we] understand that Instagram just doesn’t take action. But we thought YouTube and Reddit might, but they also did not,” they added. Even though Nipunika reported the post, the algorithm still showed them more reels from Parley’s account.

Responsibility with users: Meta

A spokesperson for Meta said the glasses have an LED light to signal to others that a recording is underway and that users are responsible for using them safely.

In an emailed statement, the spokesperson said: “Our glasses have an LED light that activates whenever someone captures content, so it’s clear the device is recording. Our terms of service clearly state that users are responsible for complying with all applicable laws and for using Ray-Ban Meta glasses in a safe, respectful manner. And as with any recording device, people shouldn’t use them for engaging in harmful activities like harassment, infringing on privacy rights, or capturing sensitive information.”

Meta: Developer and distribution channel

Tech policy experts said Meta cannot absolve itself of any responsibility as it controls both ends of the harm pipeline - the device that captures without consent and the distribution platform that decides whether the resulting content stays up or is taken down.

Apar Gupta, advocate and founder director of Internet Freedom Foundation, remarked that Meta bears full responsibility “because it built both the camera and the platform. It designed glasses whose only warning to bystanders is a small light.”

Despite Instagram’s takedown, the video was far from gone.

9.8 million views on YouTube before deletion

Months after the incident, the clip still appears on X. In an hour-long livestream on YouTube with his followers, Parley complained about other accounts getting more traction using ‘his’ video. The content creator did not respond to a request for an interview.

Questions sent to YouTube went unanswered till the time of publishing. The Alphabet-owned platform took down the original video in July after Shubnam made a copyright claim, though Parley’s livestream discussing the clip remains online. The clip had 9.8 million views on YouTube before it was removed.

‘Pervert glasses pervert mutual construct of privacy’

Two weeks after the incident, Shubnam posted a video of themself on Instagram explaining that Parley’s video was taken without consent and that their outburst was provoked when they spotted three of Parley’s friends recording with a phone.

Shubnam stressed that the protest at Jantar Mantar was against the Trans Bill and that the incident with the content creator proved why the trans community, which has historically borne the brunt of violence, humiliation and exclusion in India, needed provisions in the law to protect them.

They said they had lived a relatively quiet life for the past ten years, and this was the first time they had appeared as themselves. They spoke about the relentless online harassment against them, which included people editing their image with AI.

Shubnam said they were wary of filing a cyber-bullying complaint with the police.

“Filing a cyber-bullying complaint would mean I would have to visit the police station to complete the complaint. Being transfeminine, I have not had great experience with some cops in the past, and I avoid meeting them as much as I can.”

In a separate Instagram post, they uploaded an illustration calling Meta’s wearable tech ‘pervert glasses’.

“The perversion of pervert glasses is not just that it perverts our mutual constructs of privacy,” Shubnam said. “No public space belongs to any one individual just because they have the freedom to be there. It belongs to everyone.”

They added, “One single person cannot own the right to randomly record images of people without their consent and use them or feed those unconsented images into any kind of database (AI in this case).”

‘Public place does not mean consenting to be filmed covertly’

Lawyer Apar Gupta at the Internet Freedom Foundation said this incident shows why the public-place argument fails. Gupta pointed to the 2017 Puttaswamy judgement, in which the Supreme Court held that privacy attaches to the person, not the place.

“Being visible in public means accepting a stranger’s glance. It does not mean consenting to be covertly filmed through someone's glasses, baited with hostile questions, and broadcast to millions on Instagram. Capture, storage and circulation change the act entirely,” he said.

He also said the organisers at the Jantar Mantar protest had posted volunteers to discourage filming, because many present were not publicly out.

“For a trans woman, such a video means outing, harassment and AI-warped copies, and the NALSA (2014) judgement treats gender identity as part of the dignity Article 21 protects,” he said.

“They were also exercising their Article 19 rights to speak and assemble. If protesters can be secretly filmed and mocked online, fewer will show up,” he added.

Smart glasses as assistive tech

Not everyone’s experience with the technology has been harmful. A growing number of visually impaired content creators are finding utility in Meta’s AI smart glasses.

Twenty-year-old Ashka Goyal, who lost her vision later in life, is using the glasses to help her read labels and choose her outfits. She also uses the glasses to record videos for her budding Instagram page.

Goyal, who hails from Raipur, is living independently in the UK while pursuing a degree in fashion at the London College of Fashion.

A National Health Service-affiliated doctor recommended the smart glasses and got her to try them on during her visit to get a disability certificate, in March this year.

Goyal said the Meta AI smart glasses work far better and cost a fraction of the Orcam MyEye Pro glasses for which she forked out a whopping Rs 4.5 lakh.

However, despite its positive utility, the glasses pose a privacy risk not just to bystanders but also to the wearer, according to Swedish investigative journalist Julia Lindblom.

Asking a question can initiate a recording

Lindblom, who works for Swedish outlet Göteborgs Posten, has uncovered privacy risks smart glasses pose.

Different types of data belonging to the wearer are also constantly being logged to make the device more accurate, she explained.

She said simply asking the AI system a question can trigger a recording that can capture all kinds of data without the wearer or bystanders' knowledge.

Lindblom had previously reported how workers in Nairobi, Kenya at Sama – a contractor for Meta – encountered recordings from the glasses containing intimate visuals, including nudity, sex, toilet visits and other sensitive information.

“The act of asking the AI a question can trigger the capture and transmission of audio, images or video, turning an apparently simple interaction into part of a much larger data-processing system,” said Julia.

Artificial Intelligence systems can extract faces, voices, locations, relationships, objects, routines, documents on a desk and potentially sensitive information about health, religion, sexuality or immigration status, she said.

“The central issue is not only storage. It is what can be inferred, combined and reused.”

“Most people focus on the visible camera: ‘Am I being filmed?’ But the more important question may be: ‘What happens after I am filmed?’”

Smart glasses: A tool for surveillance

Meanwhile, Apar Gupta said Meta’s smart glasses are built for surveillance.

“The marketing around the Ray-Ban Meta glasses does not make them a consumer assistive device when the core functionality ties to surveillance of human beings. It is downright profiteering without consent and Meta is failing to account for civil liberties,” he said.

‘I'm being clocked everywhere now’

Shubnam said they are being recognised in public because of the memes.

“Random strangers are saying ‘tum to wahi CJP waale ho na?’ (you’re the same CJP person, right?), although I never even went to any CJP (Cockroach Janta Party) protest,” they said.

“Just within my neighbourhood, a man passed a comment after I passed them, ‘Inko badi azaadi azaadi chahiye’ (they want all this freedom). And all this is happening while I’m wearing a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, which is what I wear when I step out to go to the nearby Mother Dairy. I haven’t even stepped out wearing a saree yet.”

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CJP protest and how Delhi Police broke the law

From ‘Godi media’ taunts to assault: The reporters caught in Jantar Mantar’s anger

Prateek Goyal — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:35:52 GMT

From rape threats to a stolen phone, and a mother heckled in her own neighbourhood park.

Ravish Ranjan Shukla, Dev Kotak and Varun Bhasin are among several journalists targeted at the protest site.

Four days after a young NDTV reporter covered the CJP protest at Jantar Mantar, her mother was surrounded in a neighbourhood park by people demanding to know why her daughter had lied.

They had watched a viral video of the journalist and told the mother: “Why did your daughter lie? She is a liar, Godi media.”

By then, the reporter had already spent days absorbing worse. A group told her at the protest site: “Pimp, pig, you sleep with your father, your mother is …”. Online, she received rape threats and death threats. She has since taken leave from work. According to a source close to her, she now wears a mask when she steps out so that she isn’t recognised.

Within the last four days at Jantar Mantar, reporters from various media channels have been heckled and, in at least two instances, physically targeted by sections of the crowd – one of them chased into a police vehicle that was later pelted with stones. The pattern exposes a problem the television industry has largely refused to confront: public anger at prime-time news, accumulated over years, is being taken out on the people with little say in what goes on air.

‘NDTV ki dalli aurat hai’

The NDTV reporter went to Jantar Mantar on July 18, the day Sonam Wangchuk was taken away by the Delhi Police. She had previously covered the NEET paper leak and questioned the accountability of the National Testing Agency. She was among the few reporters present when Wangchuk was taken away in an ambulance.

Reporting live, she said Wangchuk had been forcibly taken away and that protesters saw the action as an attack on the Constitution. When the anchor asked for the police version, she quoted the DCP’s statement – issued after the detention – that the police had acted peacefully and exercised restraint.

That was when the crowd turned. Some protesters began shouting “NDTV ki dalli aurat hai” (She is a pimp from NDTV). Others joined in. She was called “Dalal media” and “Godi media”, told she had come from Modi’s guest house, and told to leave. Someone recorded her.

The video was posted by a social media account and clocked 60 million views. Links to her personal accounts were circulated; her photographs were posted in the comments.

She received threats but returned to cover the protest the next day anyway. This time she was recognised and surrounded. Protesters made sexually explicit remarks, called her “suwar” and “dalal”, said she slept with her father, and pulled at her shirt. The evening after that, her mother was confronted in the park.

‘They took away my phone’

Two videos of Times Now reporter Dev Kotak circulated on social media, showing an assault by a section of the crowd. In one, two protesters are seen leading him away while he appears to be in shock. “You are safe now,” they tell him. Kotak can be heard asking, “Where is my phone?” His shirt was torn. His phone had been snatched.

Is this a protest or mob violence? A Times Now reporter covering the CJP protest was allegedly chased, assaulted, and hospitalised. His clothes were reportedly torn, his phone and wallet stolen, and his spectacles broken.#Delhi #ViralVideo pic.twitter.com/jKDxShA2Dy
— Smriti Sharmaa (@SmritiSharma_) July 22, 2026

One of the men who pulled him out said: “We put in a lot of effort to save his life. There is a lot of anger against the media among the people, but something like this should not happen at all. Some youngsters did wrong, but we saved him and brought him here.”

Have known Dev since our college days. He is truly a gem of a person- calm, composed, and not easily provoked. While I understand the frustrations with the media house he works for, there is no justification whatsoever for attempting to mob-lynch a journalist. An unruly crowd… https://t.co/Ys9rmGv1IF pic.twitter.com/WRaXC5ILzC
— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) July 21, 2026

In the second video, Kotak describes what happened: “From six different directions, 100 punches, kicks, slaps, water, and bottles were thrown at me. They took away my spectacles. As my spectacles were not there, I was not able to see clearly. I was telling them that I was not able to see without my spectacles and asking them not to beat me on my face … I was telling them that I had not done anything wrong and that I was just leaving, but they pushed me down and started kicking me. They snatched away my mobile phone, watch, and glasses.”

The same day, ABP News reporter Varun Bhasin was chased by protesters.

इसी माइक से मैंने सवाल पूछे थे।

जब 2024 में नीट रिजल्ट के बाद 67 टॉपर निकले- जब झज्जर सेंटर पर सवाल उठे, जब NTA जवाब देने से बच रही थी - तब मैं पहले दिन से आपके लिए सवाल कर रहा था।

2026 में भी मैने वही किया लेकिन !

आज मेरी रिपोर्ट देखे बिना, मेरा काम जाने बिना, मुझे “गोदी… pic.twitter.com/MEQOC6YSxP
— Varun Bhasin (@varunbhasinji) July 21, 2026

Bhasin was near Parliament when he learnt that protesters had reached Rail Bhawan, and rushed there. “He was simply standing with his microphone and talking to two or three students,” said a source privy to the incident. “Before he could even begin reporting, the protesters noticed his microphone and surrounded him … They said to him, ‘Why do you never show our side of the story? Why have you come now? It is too late.’”

Water and trash were thrown at him. Someone tried to push money into his pocket. Bhasin didn’t respond; he kept smiling and tried to walk away. The crowd followed.

“To save himself, he got into a Delhi Police vehicle,” the source said. “The mob opened the door and tried to pull him out by holding his legs … Somehow, the driver acted quickly and sped the vehicle away. They chased the vehicle, pelting stones on it, damaging the back windshield mirror.”

हमारा युवा साथी रवीश रंजन वही, NDTV का लाल माइक वही, पर मैनेजमेंट बदल गया तो ब्रैंड बदल गया और फिर इसके प्रति लोगों का नज़रिया बदल गया… लेकिन मैं जानता हूँ कि @ravishranjanshu नहीं बदला है। संस्थान के नए माहौल में भी अपनी पत्रकारिता धर्म को निभा रहा है। जंतर मंतर के माहौल को… pic.twitter.com/66QuIyL1PY
— Umashankar Singh उमाशंकर सिंह (@umashankarsingh) July 22, 2026

NDTV journalist Ravish Ranjan Shukla was also heckled and called “Godi media”; a video of the episode was posted online. “In my 22-year career in journalism, I have worked in six cities across four states. Governments have come and gone, yet I never sought even the slightest personal gain from anyone, nor did I ever pander to those in power. That is why the question of bowing down simply does not arise. I am a field reporter; I report exactly what I see, with complete impartiality,” Shukla later tweeted.

I’ve seen Ravish Ranjan at work over the years. He’s a hardworking, honest journalist who believes in reporting from the ground. No journalist deserves to be heckled for doing their job.

Differences of opinion are part of democracy; intimidation is not. https://t.co/WI1t4HUdtX
— Marya Shakil (@maryashakil) July 22, 2026

NDTV’s Anushka Garg, along with Times Now’s Shafali Nigam and Jyoti Mishra, were also among other reporters harassed at the site.

Shafali Nigam told viewers on air, “My cameraman was heckled. He was grabbed by the neck, held by his collar, and thrown backwards. I went up to them and told them that they couldn't do that. That was when someone kicked me on my right leg.”

STATEMENT FROM TIMES NETWORK

.@TimesNetwork strongly condemns the reprehensible attacks on our reporters—Dev Kotak, Shafali Nigam, and Jyoti Mishra—while they were covering protests in New Delhi.

Reporting from the ground is not just the duty of journalists; it is a… pic.twitter.com/PhmaLuDcv8
— TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) July 22, 2026

Times Now said “the manner in which some persons chose to express their disagreement through violence can have a chilling effect on the free movement and functioning of journalists across India, which is not in the interests of democracy. We may differ in views, but we cannot take the law into our own hands.”

Watch on YouTube

Shambhavi Srivastava, a principal correspondent with Republic TV, was hit during the July 20 march. “They hit me on my chest, they hit me on my arm and people deliberately stormed on my feet with their heels and shoes and there was one person who was particularly not happy with the media house that im working with and he had some sort of sharp object a pen or something and he managed to stab me with it,” she said on her channel.

View this post on Instagram

Peek TV co-founder Priyanshi Sharma was heckled for asking questions critical of the CJP leadership on the day of the Parliament march.

The attacks have set off an argument within the profession itself. Some journalists, writing online, have located the cause in the industry rather than the crowd – arguing that years of slanted prime-time coverage built the hostility that field reporters are now walking into. Others have directed their appeals at the protesters, asking that whatever the grievance against a channel, it not be settled on the person holding its microphone.

ये व्यक्ति पत्रकारों के खिलाफ भीड़ को “लिचिंग” के लिये भड़का रहा है.

एक पॉलिटिकल पार्टी की राजनीतिक यात्रा में हिस्सा लेकर अपनी पत्रकारिता बेच देने वाला शख़्स पत्रकारिता सिखाने में लगा हुआ है. https://t.co/s1QnOST5HX
— Chitra Tripathi (@chitraaum) July 22, 2026

चित्रा जी, दौर की बातें आप तो ना करें तो ही ठीक है...क्योंकि दौर-दौर की बात है तो आप किस दौर में क्या कर रही थी इसके रिकॉर्ड सारे मौजूद हैं. वैसे आप खुद को पत्रकार वाली कैटेगरी से हटा ही लीजिए कुछ खास फर्क नहीं पड़ेगा क्योंकि इस पेश के साथ आपसे न्याय नहीं हो पा रहा है. अंतरआत्मा…
— Avdhesh (@Zinda_Avdhesh) July 22, 2026

प्रदर्शनकारियों से अपील है .
Pl फील्ड रिपोर्टर्स के साथ ऐसा सलूक न करें . हर चैनल में कुछ अच्छे रिपोर्टर भी हैं . वैसे भी चैनल के कॉन्टेंट से आपको नाराजगी है तो उसकी सजा रिपोर्टर को मत दीजिए . इसी ABP न्यूज में प्रतिमा मिश्रा और संदीप चौधरी जैसे दमदार एंकर भी हैं . https://t.co/ejjwsL1L08
— Ajit Anjum (@ajitanjum) July 21, 2026

Why should only the journalists be safe - do they have a special license? why shouldn't other citizens be safe? why aren't other citizens safe today? Because journalists didn't do their jobs. Not only they didn't do their jobs, they actively create a situation in the country that… https://t.co/JWD7lc8kPp
— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) July 21, 2026

Zee News woke up after about a month to report at the Jantar Mantar Students protest under police protection and ofcourse, Police version. pic.twitter.com/ayq4Pjq1Z4
— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) July 22, 2026

The anger and its address

Journalists who covered the protest say the hostility is not new, but its intensity is.

“I have covered the farmers’ protest as well, and I was called Godi Media because of the news organisations I worked for, including Zee, Times Now and ABP,” said one. “But this protest felt different. Reporters from television news channels were facing what looked like lynching type attacks, and that is deeply worrying. Reporters are the people on the ground, and in my experience, 90 percent of them report the facts accurately. It is the people sitting in the newsroom, the owners, editors and prime-time anchors, who decide the editorial line and shape the narratives.”

He added: “It is high time to change all this. Otherwise, reporters on the ground will continue to bear the consequences of the agendas set by news channels and the anchors.”

A senior journalist described the heckling as routine. “There are some fringe elements among the protesters who indulge in such behaviour, and this kind of heckling has now become a part of many protests. Because of the way many mainstream television news channels operate, reporters on the ground end up paying the price. Even we do not agree with many of the narratives being pushed by news channels. But reporters do not make editorial decisions … Unfortunately, reporters have been generalised because of the actions of news channels.”

He was careful not to absolve the industry. “It is true that some channels engage in practices that cannot be called journalism, but field reporters are not the ones responsible for those decisions. If there is criticism to be made, it should be directed at those who set the editorial agenda and use television platforms to spread false narratives and support those in power, not at the reporters who are sent to cover events.”

Another journalist at the site said: “The anger many people feel towards sections of the television news industry is real. But that anger is often directed at the wrong people. It is not field reporters who decide editorial lines, shape prime-time debates or push misleading narratives … Targeting reporters on the ground, many of whom are simply doing their jobs, only makes journalism more difficult.”

Several videos in circulation also show protesters intervening to pull reporters out of hostile crowds, and protesters were not the only obstacle journalists faced.

During the July 20 march, several journalists also faced police action. That is a separate story, but it belongs in the frame here for a simple reason: the people covering Jantar Mantar have been squeezed from both directions.

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Pizzas, parathas and solidarity: Supporters from Mumbai to Dubai are feeding Jantar Mantar

Anmol Pritam — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:35:31 GMT

From 16 pizzas sent from Dubai to steady streams of hot parathas, online food orders are fueling protesters at Jantar Mantar.

Watch on YouTube

Jantar Mantar has seen an unusual show of solidarity over the past two days – not in the form of slogans, but pizzas, parathas and water bottles.

As the Cockroach Janta Party’s protest regained steam after Monday’s parliament march and the vicious crackdown by the Delhi Police, delivery riders have been arriving at the landmark site in a steady stream, dropping off food ordered by people who cannot join the demonstration in person but want to support it anyway.

One rider said he had made six trips to the location since 7 am alone, delivering everything from biryani to an order of 16 pizzas placed all the way from Dubai. Riders said they aren’t allowed inside the protest area, so they wait at the edge and call out to volunteers to collect the orders. As one put it, describing how the handover works: “We have to tell them, ‘Someone has sent this to help you; if you need it, please take the order’.”

The gestures span geographies – orders have come in from Dubai, Bombay and other cities – turning food delivery apps into an improvised channel for public participation in the protest.

Watch this ground report.

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‘With Wangchuk gone, cops thought hope would die’: The weekend that changed the CJP protest

Fact check shows Delhi police used baton with nails at Jantar Mantar

Mohammed Zubair, Shinjinee Majumder, Ankita Mahalanobish — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 10:07:30 GMT

Though the Delhi Police claimed the footage was not from July 20, videos procured by Alt News, their metadata, geo-location of the spot, and witness testimonies prove otherwise.

After participants from the July 20 march in Delhi put up videos on social media saying that police were carrying batons with nails fixed on them during the crackdown on protesters, Delhi police called the claims misleading and false. Two videos surfaced on social media showing such batons and protesters confronting police officers about their use. Delhi Police asserted that the videos of baton with nails were not related to the July 20 protest.

One such video was posted by a user named Ashwini Soni (@Ramraajya).

FAKE NEWS ALERT

The videos circulating on social media alleging that police used batons fitted with nails during yesterday's protest are false and misleading. These videos are not related to yesterday's protest.

Citizens are advised not to spread unverified information and to…
— Delhi Police (@DelhiPolice) July 21, 2026

The Press Information Bureau (PIB) of the Union government, too, put out a fact check quoting the Delhi Police post.

Social media posts are circulating a video claiming that batons fitted with nails were used against protesters in Delhi.#PIBFactCheck:

❌ This claim is #Fake.

🔸Always rely on official sources for verified information.

📢 Stay alert, and report suspicious content related… pic.twitter.com/1Ls1X5OlXK
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) July 21, 2026

DD News shared the PIB fact check. Right-wing propaganda outlet OpIndia published a ‘fact-check’ article echoing Delhi Police’s claim.

Fact Check

We found that Instagram user @ansh.visuals_ had posted a video on July 20 of youth protestors confronting police officers over the use of batons with nails. One of the protesters can be seen taking the baton in his hand and showing it to camera. While the police officials seemingly remain unperturbed, the demonstrators can be heard asking questions like “How did you not see? We saw it from afar, and you didn’t see?” while referring to the batons.

@ansh.visuals_ posted the video with the text, “Some of the police officers had nails in their lathi’s says alot.” (sic)

Around 6.40pm on July 21, the post was made unavailable in India. Here is a downloaded version:

The reader must note that the above video is not the one the Delhi Police fact-checked. However, the comparison below shows that both the videos are of the same altercation and had been filmed at the same spot. One of the protesters can also be seen clearly in both the videos.

We reached out to the uploader, who shared the screen-recording of the metadata of the video. According to the metadata, the video was filmed on July 20, 2026, at 4:33 pm.

He also shared a longer version of the same video with Alt News, in which it can be clearly seen that the baton with nails was in the hand of a police official named Vishal Tomar. At the 00.34-minute timestamp in the video, the individual in black-and-white striped shirt notices the baton in Tomar’s hand.

We geo-located the spot where protestors confronted police officials about the use of batons with nails. It took place outside The Imperial on Janpath Road. Below is a comparison between the Google Maps street view and a frame from the viral video.

We spoke to a protester present at the site. Though he did not want to be named, he confirmed to Alt News on July 21 that he was among the group that confronted the police officials the previous day. “Someone in the crowd noticed that one of the officials had this baton with nails. We are not sure whether they used it, but the video is definitely from yesterday. The policeman’s name was Vishal Tomar. When we confronted them, everyone, including the senior police officers, ignored us. They did not reply to us,” he said.

The video shared by Aswhini Soni (the one that Delhi Police ‘fact checked’) was originally posted on Instagram by a user named Rahul Gaur (@Gaur_95_com). Gaur uploaded the video with the claim that Delhi Police were carrying sticks with nails. When Alt News reached out to him, he said, “I recorded the video myself. I was there in person.”

So, from the above evidences — videos procured by Alt News, their metadata, geo-location of the spot and witness testimonies — it can be conclusively proved that during the protest on July 20, a Delhi Police official was seen carrying a baton with nails attached to it, and police officials were confronted by protesters about it. However, there is no evidence to prove that the baton was actually used to hit protestors.

Delhi Police’s claim that “these videos are not related to yesterday’s protest” is false.

This story was originally published by Altnews and has been republished with permission.

Lathis, tear gas and injured protesters: The ‘Chalo Sansad’ crackdown in pictures

The story of the Parliament march, told hour by hour

NL Team — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:20:00 GMT

From Sonam Wangchuk’s forcible removal to the Parliament march that ended in lathi charges and tear gas, Newslaundry reconstructs the protests hour by hour through inputs from the ground.

Watch on YouTube

From the first signs of a swelling crowd after Sonam Wangchuk was forcibly shifted by the Delhi Police on Saturday, to the dramatic scenes outside Parliament on Monday, this video reconstructs the protest hour by hour.

Drawing on reporting by the Newslaundry team on the ground, we trace how events unfolded: the growing crowds at Jantar Mantar, the march towards Parliament, the breaching of barricades, the police lathi charge, the firing of tear gas shells, the clearing of the protest site, and the protesters’ return hours later.

In a moment that generated competing claims and viral clips, this is a chronological account built from ground reporting to help you understand what happened, when it happened, and how the day unfolded.

If you value on-the-ground journalism that goes beyond the headlines, support independent media by subscribing to Newslaundry.

Lathis, tear gas and injured protesters: The ‘Chalo Sansad’ crackdown in picturesUnder shadow of lathis and barricades: The day the Modi govt finally engaged the CJP‘Told my father to quit police job’: Inside Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital after the Parliament march

State-owned ONGC donated over Rs 668 crore to 20 Sangh-linked organisations across 10 years

Sachi Hegde, Ayush Joshi, Jahnavi, Neel Madhav — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:30:00 GMT

Of the 20 RSS-linked organisations that TNM identified, nine are directly affiliated to the Sangh, nine were either started by or are led by individuals with ties to the RSS, and two have worked with the Sangh.

In June this year, Mohan Bhagwat offered many reasons for refuting demands that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) be registered.

The sarsanghachalak—supreme leader—of the RSS argued that it is only a “body of individuals”; that the government already knows it exists because it has been banned multiple times since its inception; and that “Hindu Dharma is not registered” either. Bhagwat also said that the RSS did not need to be legally registered because only “those who seek funds from the government require registration”. The Sangh has long claimed that it has no such requirement. In its telling, it sustains itself on the tax-free contributions that volunteers make as gurudakshina—offerings to a teacher.

But the RSS’s financial trail is opaque. The amounts it receives through the gurudakshina system are not publicly disclosed. Apart from this, a vast network of registered and unregistered organisations affiliated to the Sangh rely on various funding channels, some of which include foreign sources. How these funds circulate through the sprawling ecosystem is largely unknown.

What is clear, however, is that at least some of the registered Sangh-affiliated organisations are raising funds through government sources.

A TNM investigation reveals that the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)—one of India’s top Public Sector Undertakings—donated Rs 670.97 crore to 20 Sangh-linked organisations, starting from 2013. Of the total amount, a little less than three crores was given to three of the 20 organisations between 2013 and 2015. The rest of the funds were disbursed over the ten years that followed.

ONGC made these contributions from its Corporate Social Responsibility funds, through which it gives hundreds of crores to various organisations every year.

From the first quarter of 2015 until the first quarter of 2025, ONGC donated Rs 4,531 crore to over 2,000 organisations and projects across India, its CSR annual reports show. Of this amount, a little over 14.7% or Rs 668.01 crore, went to the 20 organisations that TNM identified as having links to the RSS. The main findings of this investigation do not include Sangh-linked organisations that received less than Rs one crore from the PSU.

The 20 organisations that TNM identified fall into three broad categories: nine are directly affiliated to the Sangh, nine were either started by or are led by individuals with ties to the RSS, and two have worked with the Sangh.

We identified a majority of these RSS-linked beneficiaries by mapping them to ‘Seeing the Sangh.’ This is the world’s first comprehensive map of over 2,500 organisations affiliated to the Sangh, which was released in late-2025. The database was compiled by a research team led by Dr Felix Pal, a political science and international relations lecturer at the University of Western Australia. It has been fact-checked by The Caravan; and is hosted by the French University Science Po’s Centre of International Studies.

ONGC did not respond to TNM’s multiple requests for comment.

Top Beneficiaries: A hospital in Assam and a trust named after Golwalkar’s personal assistant

Among the 20-RSS linked organisations that we identified, the biggest beneficiary of ONGC’s CSR contributions is Swargadew Siu-Ka-Pha Hospital, a 300-bed multi-speciality hospital in Assam’s Sivasagar district.

The hospital is co-managed and operated by ONGC along with the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Vaidyakiya Pratishthan (BAVP), an Aurangabad-based charitable trust “driven by the philosophy of RSS,” according to an online brochure. Started in 1989, the BAVP runs a number of medical institutions. This includes the Dr Hedgewar Hospital, named after the RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, in Aurangabad—which is “run by RSS swayamsevaks,” according to an article in the RSS mouthpiece, The Organiser.

The chairman of Siu-Ka-Pha Hospital, Dr Anant Pandhare, is on the BAVP’s board of trustees. He was appointed the president of AIIMS Nagpur in February 2025. He mentions spending time at an RSS shakha in a LinkedIn post from that year. Speaking about the Assam hospital with the Economic Times, Pandhare said, “We are a RSS affiliated organisation and service is our motto.”

It was a memorable visit. When I introduced more than 125 small big donors and doctors present in the hall, he said “Doc, you know them by heart each and everyone. That’s amazing. It seems you have special bond with everyone” https://t.co/bUPT0HQDf7
— Dr Anant Pandhare (@apandhare1) October 10, 2024

ONGC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the BAVP over Siu-Ka-Pha Hospital in 2017. The PSU started giving money for the facility a year earlier, records reviewed by the TNM show. It spent a little over Rs 434 crore from its CSR funds for the hospital between 2016 and 2024.

(A government press release from 2023 notes that Siu-Ka-Pha Hospital was built at a total cost of Rs 483 crore—it is unclear whether ONGC bore the entire amount.)

The hospital as it stands today—a large 300-bedded facility, with 21 specialities and 23 doctors—was inaugurated on November 4, 2023. Its stated aim is to “provide affordable, accessible, quality healthcare and treatments to every commoner” so that such facilities are available to patients “irrespective of people’s status.” Tariff cards reviewed by TNM reflect that a bed in the general ward the hospital costs around Rs 800. A semi-cabin, cabin, and suite are priced at Rs 2,000, Rs 3,000 and Rs 5,500 respectively.

Siu-Ka-Pha Hospital is empanelled under the Indian government’s flagship health insurance scheme, Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), Anchul Dutta, a senior marketing executive from the hospital, told TNM. The scheme covers around 264 services, including those related to neurology and cardiology. The hospital provides a discount of 40% on the total bill for patients who are below the poverty line and a 20% discount on the pharmacy bill, said Anchul.

The second highest RSS-linked beneficiary of ONGC’s CSR funds is located in Nagpur. This is a trust called Dr Aabaji Thatte Seva Aur Anusandhan Sanstha. It takes its name after the personal assistant of MS Golwalkar, the second sarasanghachalak of the RSS. Between 2017 and 2022, ONGC gave this trust Rs 140 crore for the establishment of the National Cancer Institute in Nagpur.

Shailesh Joglekar—the general secretary and chief executive officer of this cancer institute—is also the general secretary of the Dr Aabaji Thatte Seva Aur Anusandhan Sanstha. He is an RSS member who was once the president of the Bajrang Dal’s Vidarbha chapter and is actively involved with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), noted Felix Pal in an essay for The Caravan. Joglekar’s LinkedIn profile also lists him as an honorary chairman of the Bhonsala Military School, which has been linked to attacks by Hindu right extremists, according to news reports.

The National Cancer Institute was jointly conceived by Joglekar—who lost his wife and childhood friend to cancer—and Maharashtra’s current Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, whose father had also succumbed to the illness, noted one report. Built on land stretching across 25 acres, the facility has a capacity of 470 beds.

Sunil Manohar, the former advocate general of Maharashtra, who once described his grandfather as being a “devoted RSS cadre and a friend of second sarasanghachalak Madhav Golvalkar Guruji,” is the president of the National Cancer Institute. Its vice-president is Ajay Sancheti, a Bharatiya Janata Party politician and former Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament, whose family reportedly had close ties with the RSS across generations.

The cancer institute was inaugurated in April 2023. Those in attendance included Mohan Bhagwat; Devendra Fadnavis; Eknath Shinde, then the chief minister of Maharashtra; Nitin Gadkari, the union minister for road transport and highways; and Gautam Adani, the billionaire founder-chairperson of the Adani Group.

Smaller but significant donations

Apart from the BAVP and the Dr Aabaji Thatte Seva Aur Anusandhan Sanstha, ONGC also gave funds to 18 other RSS-linked organisations. These organisations received relatively smaller amounts compared to the top two beneficiaries. Even so, the grants ranged from Rs one crore to over Rs 15 crore.

ONGC gave Rs 15.53 crore to Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (S VYASA)—a deemed-to-be university based in Bengaluru—to build hostels in Karnataka, and conduct yoga camps in Odisha and Assam. S VYASA’s founder-chancellor HR Nagendra has been Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s yoga ‘consultant’ for nearly four decades. In 2015, the institute worked with the RSS to conduct yoga camps across the country.

Various branches of the Sewa Bharati, which falls under Rashtriya Sewa Bharati—the RSS’s social-services arm—received Rs 13.95 crore for medical equipment, flood relief, building yoga centres, as well as student welfare hostels across India.

As with the BAVP, Bharat Vikas Parishad too received funds to build a multi-speciality hospital—this one in Rajasthan. The organisation, which aims to cultivate a “physically, economically and morally strong India,” was founded by a surgeon called Suraj Prakash. Its first president was Lala Hans Raj Gupta, a former mayor of Delhi and a senior RSS leader. In 2022, Prakash’s birth centenary was marked by a function at which Bhagwat reportedly said that “India should not imitate other countries.” The event’s guest of honour was industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla.

Seven among the 20 RSS-linked organisations that TNM identified received ONGC funds to build or run schools.

The Rashtrotthana Parishat, which received Rs 11.6 crore, describes itself as a public service voluntary organisation “dedicated to promoting values of patriotism, integrity, commitment, and affection within society.” It was co-founded by senior RSS leader MC Jayadev, and is a listed associate of the Rashtriya Sewa Bharati, the social-services arm of the RSS.

Schools run by the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation received Rs 8.69 crore. These are modelled on a concept outlined by Murlidhar Dattatreya Deoras—popularly known as Bhaurao Deoras—who was reportedly a younger brother of the third RSS sarsanghchalak Madhukar Dattatreya Deoras, and an RSS organiser himself. The foundation was established in the mid-eighties; and by 1989, Shyam Gupta, a senior RSS pracharak, took over. RSS leader Rajneesh Arora contributed to the initial development of Ekal Vidyalayas. In 2018, the Punjab Vigilance Bureau arrested Arora in connection with allegations of serious financial fraud and administrative malpractices at the Punjab Technical University (PTU), of which he was the vice-chancellor. He was also accused of “pushing RSS ideology” through courses he introduced at the PTU and of “making recruitments from families of saffron ideology.” The case was dropped by 2020.

Vivekananda Kendra describes itself as a “spiritually oriented service mission” that is centred around the twin objectives of “man-making and nation-building.”This organisation received Rs 3.96 crore. Founded by Eknath Ranade, the former general secretary of the RSS, Vivekananda Kendra aspired to “encompass…the entire length and breadth of Bharat,” so that it could “arouse all Hindus and all India,” noted one article.

Four of the seven schools that received donations are affiliated to the educational wing of the RSS, Vidya Bharati Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Sansthan. These include Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Military Academy in Silvassa, which received Rs 4.5 crore to build staff quarters. Saraswati Shishu Vidya Mandir received Rs 2.09 crore to run schools and hostels across Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat among others. Rajju Bhaiya Sainik Vidya Mandir, an “RSS Army school” to train students for the armed forces, received Rs 2.20 crore; and the Shishu Shiksha Samiti Assam received Rs 1.93 crore for building classrooms, a science lab, and installing a water purifier. Manav Seva Pratisthan, which received Rs 1.6 crore to build a school hostel in West Bengal, is listed as a partner organisation to a programme called Support a Child USA, a VHP America project. A school run by Manav Seva Prathisthan in West Bengal hosted an arms training camp, organised by the Bajrang Dal in 2017, according to news reports.

Apart from S VYASA, ONGC also disbursed funds to four other organisations for residential facilities.

Ekalavya Foundation received Rs 4.72 crore to build student dormitories at an organic agriculture training centre in Telangana. The foundation was founded by P Venugopal Reddy, a former RSS worker. Bhagwat made an appearance at a Eklavaya Foundation event a few years ago, where he performed a prayer, addressed a gathering of about 1,500 farming families, and praised Reddy’s work, news reports show. Samarpan Charitable Trust, listed as an associate by Rashtriya Sewa Bharati, received Rs 4.3 crore to build hostels for tribal girls in Kandhamal, Odisha.

The Param Shakti Peeth, founded by Sadhvi Ritambhara, received Rs 2.49 crore for a residential and day-care centre for children. The UP-based organisation works in the areas of children's education and health. Ritambhara is the founder of Durga Vahini, the women’s wing of the VHP. Known for her documented role in the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, as well as her inflammatory speeches against Muslims and Christians, Rithambhara was conferred with the Padma Bhushan in 2025.

Vivekanand Medical Research Trust (VMRT), which received Rs 7.47 crore, was established by the BJP leader, RSS worker, and former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, Shanta Kumar.

The three remaining Sangh-linked organisations that the ONGC gave a crore or more to include the Mokshda Paryavaran Evam Van Suraksha Samiti, listed as an associate of Rashtriya Sewa Bharati, which received Rs 5.12 crore to install energy-efficient ‘green’ crematoriums in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and other locations. The Deendayal Research Institute—named after the prominent RSS ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya—and founded by the RSS pracharak, former Rajya Sabha member, and Bharat Ratna awardee Nanaji Deshmukh, received Rs 1.13 crore. Maharaja Shivachhatrapati Pratishthan Trust, which received Rs one crore for a five-day cultural program on Maratha warrior-king Shivaji in Delhi. The organisation was established by Babasaheb Purandare, a well-known RSS swayamsevak.

ONGC and the BJP

Over the last few years, individuals closely associated with the BJP have held positions on the ONGC board and its CSR committee.

In 2017, BJP MP and spokesperson Sambit Patra was appointed a non-official director of the board for a period of three years. Critics questioned his eligibility for this role and alleged that ONGC had not followed proper procedure in appointing him. Reena Jaitly, who recently completed a four-year-long tenure as an independent director on ONGC’s board, also headed its CSR committee from 2021 to 2026. Jaitly was the president of BJP’s Punjab State Mahila Morcha at the time of her appointment. In 2024, she was the state secretary of BJP’s Punjab unit. Syam Chand Ghosh, a BJP leader from West Bengal, was also appointed an independent director at ONGC in late-2021.

ONGC’s other donations include Rs 300 crore to the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations, or PM-CARES, fund. It also gave Rs 130 crore to Auroville Unity Fund, described on its website as “the channel for grant, donation, and contribution income that comes to Auroville.” The PM-CARES Fund, established during the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been repeatedly criticised because of the government’s opacity over how much money it generated, and how this money was then used. As several news reports have documented, over the past few years, the RSS and BJP have increased their influence over Auroville.

In the financial year 2023-2024, ONGC also gave Rs 1.12 crore to an organisation called Deen Dayal Cow Science and Training Center in Mathura. (TNM was not able to ascertain specific details about this center, which is why it has been excluded from the current list of Sangh-linked organisations.)

Five oil PSUs—ONGC, India Oil Corporation Limited, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, and Oil India Limited—reportedly gave Rs 146 crore for the Statue of Unity in Gujarat. Between 2016 and 2019, ONGC gave around Rs 100 crore for the construction of the statue to the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Rashtriya Ekta Trust, which is chaired by the Chief Minister of Gujarat, its annual records reflect.

This statue, built at a cost of Rs 2,989 crore, is touted to be the tallest in the world. It commemorates India’s first Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel, who is among the Congress leaders that the Hindu right has sought to appropriate over the last several years.

Modi first conceived of the statue in his tenth year as Gujarat’s chief minister in 2010, and its foundation was laid in 2013, noted the academic Rahul Rao, who has authored the book The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire. Modi inaugurated the statue in 2018, just before he began his campaign for a second term as prime minister. “A day before the inauguration, nearly three hundred activists, many of whom were Adivasi farmers, were detained to pre-empt a massive protest against the statue, the construction of which had resulted in the expropriation of their land,” Rao added.

That same year, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) pulled up ONGC and the other oil PSUs for their contributions to the Statue of Unity. These donations, the government auditor said, did not qualify as a CSR activity because the project was not a “heritage asset”.

All Oil PSUs, including ONGC, come under the administrative control of The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. Between 2014 and 2021, this ministry was headed by India’s current Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. In May 2021, Pradhan posted an enthusiastic tweet about the development of Badrinath Dham, a Hindu pilgrimage site in Uttarakhand. “It is a matter of great pride for our oil PSUs to be associated with the redevelopment of one of the holiest shrines of Sanatan Dharma. We are committed to the development of Badrinath Dham in alignment with PM @narendramodi’s vision of retaining the pilgrimages spiritual legacy.” ONGC later gave Rs 4.6 crore for this project.

The oil ministry is now under the charge of Hardeep Singh Puri.

Donations from ONGC to RSS-linked organisations (ONGC CSR annual reports)

With inputs from Kongkon Bora. Edited by Nikita Saxena. This investigation is part of TNM’s series that looks into the Sangh’s growth. Do contribute.

This report was republished from The News Minute as part of The News Minute-Newslaundry alliance. Read about our partnership here and become a subscriber here.

How the RSS changed its constitution to defend legal status and guru dakshina

‘Told my father to quit police job’: Inside Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital after the Parliament march

Avdhesh Kumar, Khushi Jaiswal — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:49:35 GMT

More than 250 were brought to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, many with minor injuries.

Alfiya, Vishal and Amit at RML.

At 1 am, the emergency building of Delhi’s Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital has not gone quiet. One man waits outside the ICU for his sister to regain consciousness. On the floor below, others groan with an arm or a leg in a cast. A few hours ago, all of them were marching to Parliament.

They were among more than 250 people who came to RML for treatment on Monday, according to hospital staff and a doctor on night duty. A senior doctor put the same figure to Newslaundry, adding that most took first aid and left, and that around a dozen of them were policemen. The march, called by the Cockroach Janta Party, drew thousands of students and supporters to Delhi from several states. Police blocked the route to Parliament with barricades at multiple points, and the day ended with tear gas, lathi charge and scuffles.

Newslaundry stayed at the hospital until nearly 2 am and spoke to dozens of the injured – most of them young, many of them from outside Delhi, several of whom had not told their families where they were.

‘She is still a kid’

On the fifth floor, Bharat stood outside the ICU around 1 am with CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, who came to check on Bharat’s sister, Sakshi. She had joined the protest, fell during a stampede, and is on a ventilator.

“My sister just finished college and is studying further. She is still a child, only 21. She had gone to demand her rights. I trust she will be fine,” said Bharat, who lives in Shiv Vihar. “I drive a taxi. My sister didn’t do anything wrong. I found out she was given CPR too, but there was no movement. Still, I fully trust she will be fine.”

One of Sakshi’s friends, who lives in Chhatarpur and was with her during the protest, said, “My younger sister, Sakshi and I, the three of us went to join this protest together. Near the LIC building at Rajiv Chowk, the police suddenly attacked the protesters. There was such a lathicharge that a stampede broke out. Sakshi got crushed under it in the stampede. My younger sister was also there. I started looking for her first. It took a while before I found her. Then I found out Sakshi had been taken to RML Hospital. This was around 11:30 pm. She has severe internal injuries and her condition is extremely critical.”

‘I will never wear a uniform’

In the second-floor ward, Alfiya from Prayagraj lay shivering under a bandaged leg, groaning from the chills. Two people she met only two or three hours ago are looking after her: Pradeep, who is trying to get a blanket out of the hospital staff, and a young woman massaging her hands.

Alfiya from Prayagraj.

“Today my dreams have been shattered. I will do anything, but I will never wear a uniform,” Alfiya said. “I had been preparing for UPSC for about three years. Now I want to become a lawyer. I kept shouting not to hit me with the baton, but they kept hitting. I have injuries on my head and leg.”

Alfiya studies and lives in Ashok Nagar in Delhi. Asked whether her family knew she was in hospital, she said they did.

“I have told them that even if I die, stay happy, don’t be sad. My brother is preparing for NEET. I was also supposed to become something, but today I have decided I won’t be anyone’s slave. The men in uniform are slaves to the government. They are beating children…I don’t want a job like that. My dreams died today. My father is also in the police. Today, I have told him too, that he should quit this job.”

When Newslaundry sought her consent to take her photograph, she said: “At least you are asking. They beat me while hurling abuses at my mother and sister. I will never forget today.”

At the front of the march

Vishal Pandey, 26, from Faridabad, has a private job and had come to Jantar Mantar for the protest. His leg is in a cast.

“The police rained blows on my legs badly. They hit me a lot. Then when I broke free and ran, my leg got stuck in the barricading and I fell right there. After that, the police beat me with more batons. I was walking at the very front of the march,” he said.

“Not many people at home know. Otherwise everyone will scold me and come rushing here. What happened today wasn’t right. Don’t policemen also have families?"

Vishal Pandey from Faridabad had come to Jantar Mantar for the protest.

Kallu, 35, reached Delhi from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh two days ago, drawn to the sit-in at Jantar Mantar, he says, by frustration over unemployment and inflation. He alleges police beat him badly and fractured his right leg.

“The three of us friends came here by train. Right now no one knows where anyone else is. My phone isn’t even charged. Someone just got me to the hospital. I’m getting treated. I run my household by doing labour work. We voted for the BJP before, but I am fed up with the rising inflation under this government. I lost most of my family in Covid. I want the government to change.”

Kallu claims his leg was fractured in police action

‘Protesters with me’

Amit Kumar sat on a stretcher with a bandaged arm, being fed by a man he met at the protest a few hours earlier. He had travelled from Chandauli district in Uttar Pradesh and reached Delhi by train at 7 am. The flesh on his right arm was torn open. He was brought to the hospital at around 6 pm and has been admitted since.

Amit Kumar had travelled from Chandauli.

“As soon as we reached near Parliament, the police force stationed there began advancing toward us,” he says. “At this point, the police asked the protesters to fall back, but the protesters replied that they hadn’t come to fall back. They had come to push the government instead. After that, the police fired tear gas shells, which scattered the crowd. It was during this that the police baton-charged us.”

Abhishek from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh had been part of the protest for a month, and joined it without telling his family. They still do not know he was hurt.

“Right now I am lying on a hospital bed, but even at this moment, it’s my CJP protest companions who are with me. Both my legs were injured in the lathi charge,” he said.

Abhishek from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh had been part of the protest for a month.

A staff member in the second-floor ward said patients already admitted there had been moved elsewhere; only people injured in the protest were being brought in. Others were admitted on the ground floor, and many more were reported in the CMO hall of the other building.

At the police post inside the hospital, Newslaundry asked the SHO how many protesters and policemen had been injured. He refused to share any information. However, the Delhi Police has said 118 police personnel were injured in the violence on Monday. RML is not the only hospital where injured have been treated. Some are at Lady Hardinge.

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A flagship 2024 promise, a 99% shortfall: PM internship scheme spent nearly as much on ads as interns

Indulekha Aravind — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:30:00 GMT

The PM internship scheme was read as the Modi government’s response to the jobs anger of 2024. Two years on, it has met under 1 percent of its two-year internship target and spent under 0.2% of its five-year outlay so far.

(Manjul)

It was the summer of 2025. The advertisements about the Narendra Modi government’s new internship scheme were splashed across newspapers, TV channels and social media. Like lakhs of others, P Adarsh*, 22, noticed them from his hometown Bhilai in Chhattisgarh. After finishing his degree in agricultural engineering a while ago, Adarsh was hunting for an internship that could sharpen his skills, pay some money, and still leave him evenings to prepare for a bank job exam.

So he applied through the Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme (PMIS) portal that was advertised, specifying his preferences, and got an email saying he had been selected for an internship. It was at a PSU, Bharat Petroleum (BPCL), in state capital Raipur.

But he didn’t take it.

Instead, he travelled to Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh, to the Southern Region Farm Machinery Training and Testing Institute, for an internship he had been selected for through the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme (NATS). “At the time, I was desperate and applied for multiple internships,” Adarsh says, candidly, on a phone call. Joining the BPCL internship would have meant commuting 60 km daily and the money for that would have to come out of the Rs 5,000 that was to be his monthly stipend under PMIS. In contrast, Anantpur meant a free bed at the government institute hostel, and the only major expense would be Rs 3,000 on food but the Rs 12,300 stipend would easily cover that. It was also in a domain connected to what he had studied, unlike the PMIS internship which was in a completely unrelated field. His experience may sound like a cautionary tale but it’s far from an exception.

The Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme was read as the Modi government’s answer to the jobs anger of 2024. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced it in the first budget after the Lok Sabha results with a target that made big headlines: internships for 1 crore youth in 500 top companies in five years, 30 lakh of them in the first two. But two years on, the distance between those numbers and the ones the government actually reports looks too vast to bridge.

Responses to a Right to Information (RTI) application filed with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which runs the scheme, show that till April 30, 2026, companies posted 2.97 lakh internship opportunities – nearly a tenth of the two-year target. The picture gets more bleak. These opportunities shrunk to 1.73 lakh actual offers. About 18,000 of those given these offers showed up for work. Only around 5,200 stayed to the end. This is all against a total of 12 lakh applications sent via PMIS.

The money reflects the same underwhelming reality. Of the Rs 63,000 crore initially announced for the PMIS over five years, Rs 123.7 crore, or less than 0.2 percent of the total, has actually been spent until March 15, 2026 – nearly two financial years into the scheme. Of this sliver, the government spent Rs 46.7 crore on marketing and advertising, a sum that’s just a few crores less than the Rs 54.3 crore it has actually spent on paying the interns. The remainder went towards other costs that the records do not clearly break down.

Why has a scheme tasked with solving a real problem, and armed with the resources to solve it failed to find enough takers?

The RTI responses, combined with data presented in Parliament, interviews with former interns, companies, economists and others, reveal a scheme falling far short of its promise for a host of reasons, some of which have been documented by the government’s own evaluators. Along the way, it raises the question of announcing ambitious targets without a clear pathway to get there.

A deepening crisis

PMIS was announced on July 23, 2024 in the budget of the re-elected National Democratic Alliance government. “Our government will launch a comprehensive scheme for providing internship opportunities in 500 top companies to 1 crore youth in five years. They will gain exposure for 12 months to real-life business environment, varied professions and employment opportunities,” Nirmala Sitharaman had said in her budget speech. It was one of five schemes announced that day for youth skilling and employment, with a total outlay of Rs 2 lakh crore.

The NDA government had been sworn in for a third consecutive term but the BJP’s seat tally had shrunk to 240 from 303. The party had courted first-time voters and the youth hard and multiple surveys had pointed out that employment was top of mind for this section. The newspaper coverage the morning after the budget took note that the government had blinked. One editorial remarked that the budget “was more about coming to terms with the compulsion of coalition politics and calming frayed sentiments over jobs than about big ideas or bold reforms”.

India has been struggling with how to generate enough jobs for its vast number of youth – estimated at 367 million in the age group of 15- to 29 years – for years. Of this, the 263 million who are not pursuing education make up the potential workforce.

The money reflects an underwhelming reality.

Of the Rs 63,000 crore initially announced for the PMIS over five years, Rs 123.7 crore, or less than 0.2 percent of the total, has actually been spent until March 15, 2026. Of this sliver, the government spent Rs 46.7 crore on marketing and advertising.

Over the years, education levels have increased considerably, with the country now churning out 5 million graduates annually. But graduate unemployment has remained high, reaching close to 40 percent among 15- to 25-year-olds, according to the State of Working India 2026 report by Azim Premji University. Of the 5 million graduates, only about 2.8 million annually are able to find jobs, a trend that’s held since 2004-05. Of this, an even smaller share is able to secure stable, salaried jobs within a year of graduating, the report points out.

In 2023, close to 70 percent of the unemployed youth in the country, or about 11 million, were graduates, up from 44 percent in 2011. In May, the unemployment rate for those between 15 and 29 years stood at 15.9 percent, nearly thrice the unemployment rate for those aged 15 years and above (5.5 percent), according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey.

This is the crisis that finds expression in protests over botched recruitment exams, lakhs of youngsters queuing up for a few thousand vacancies and most recently, is considered by analysts to be a factor in the rise of the Cockroach Janta Party.

At the other end of the spectrum sit complaints by India Inc, about the lack of employability of graduates. Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy had claimed in 2018 that 80 percent of Indian youngsters “are not trained suitably for any job”. Fellow IT stalwart CP Gurnani of Tech Mahindra had said 94 percent of engineering graduates are not fit to be hired. More recently, the India Skills Report estimated that just over half the graduates in India were employable, an improvement from a third a decade ago but still a large share.

It was to plug this gap “between academic learning and industry demands” that PMIS was ostensibly launched, according to government statements.

As designed originally, the scheme was to offer a 12-month internship in India’s top 500 companies, listed on the basis of average corporate social responsibility spending over three years, to anyone aged 21 to 24 years who was not employed or studying full-time and had passed high school. Company participation was voluntary. Interns would get Rs 6,000 on joining, insurance through government schemes and Rs 5,000 as monthly allowance. Of the latter, 10 percent would be paid by company CSR funds, which worked out to Rs 500, with the remaining Rs 4,500 paid by the government. Companies would also bear the training costs. This was the format for the first two rounds of the pilot. It has since been modified.

The first round of the pilot was launched on October 3, 2024 and the initial response looked promising, with 1.8 lakh candidates submitting 6.21 lakh applications, and 280 companies posting 1.27 lakh internship opportunities, according to Standing Committee reports presented in Parliament. In the next round, launched in early 2025, the number of participating companies increased to 327 but the number of internship opportunities posted reduced to 1.18 lakh. The third pilot, which started in March, is currently under way. Cumulatively, till the end of April 30, over 12 lakh applications were received, close to 3 lakh opportunities posted by companies and 1.73 lakh internship offers made to candidates, according to the RTI response.

But across these, just 18,000 interns finally joined with only 5,200 interns completing their internship.

In the first pilot round, over half the candidates who joined dropped out. In Round 2, the dropout rate improved to 33 percent but the number of interns who joined were also fewer by about 1,500. In total, over 7,600 dropped out, according to the ministry’s RTI response. Considering only about 5,000 interns completed the one-year stint, the number of dropouts should be higher but this discrepancy was not explained. The gender breakup of joinees also heavily skewed male in the first two rounds, with over 11,000 male candidates and 5,000 female candidates.

The budgetary outlay and expenditure are equally revealing of the contrast between expectation and the reality of the scheme. According to a report by the standing committee on finance on the ministry of corporate affairs’ demands for grants 2025-26, the total financial outlay for PMIS over five years was pegged at Rs 63,000 crore in budget 2024-25. To meet the target of 1 crore internships, this was to be split into Rs 19,000 crore for the first and second year for 30 lakh internships, and Rs 44,000 crore for the next three years, for 70 lakh internships. But so far, the expenditure, too, has fallen far short.

In 2024-25, the year it was launched, the scheme was allotted Rs 2,000 crore. The revised estimate was then reduced to Rs 380 crore, of which actual expenditure was Rs 29.29 crore, a fraction of the outlay. For the next financial year, FY26, the scheme was allocated an even larger amount, at Rs 10,831 crore. This became Rs 526 crore in the revised estimate, while actual expenditure, up to March 30, 2026 was Rs 94.48 crore. This shortfall, the ministry stated according to the Standing Committee Report, was because the main scheme could not be started yet, and the pilot project was still running.

Questions were emailed to the ministry seeking comment about the findings and the scheme’s progress, but there was no response despite multiple follow-ups. This report will be updated if a response is received.

Idea vs implementation

Multiple experts who were interviewed, and interns themselves, said that in theory, this was a good scheme – particularly to ease the education to jobs transition. “It’s good if institutes have training infrastructure but students don’t really get training unless industry trains them,” says Sougata Roy Choudhury, executive director of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), a partner in the scheme, and head of the CII-Rahul Bajaj Centre of Excellence on Skills. “We had been advocating for the scaling up of an apprenticeship-like model, but with more flexibility, and which could use CSR funds.”

The ministry did acknowledge several concerns and announced a few modifications. Based on the experience of Round 1, this included changes like reducing the number of applications per applicant from five to three, making the name of the company and any additional benefits more visible, and encouraging companies and states to have dedicated PMIS cells. However, these did not address several core complaints from interns.

Shantanu Rooj, founder and CEO of TeamLease Edtech, a skilling and employability solutions provider, says that providing internships as a pathway for students to get into employment was great from a concept perspective. But the best of intentions cannot paper over flaws in design and execution. “I think some of the policymakers believed that just ensuring that youngsters have access to these open positions is enough to solve this problem,” he says. The challenges, he adds, arise more from an execution deficit than an ideas deficit.

According to him, PMIS did two things: it made discovery of internships easy, and it offered an incentive. But both came with challenges.

In the first case, while there were a large number of applications, limiting employers to 500 meant that many of the opportunities were concentrated in a few regions, particularly the metro cities, and the stipend would need to cover the costs of staying in those cities for candidates from other locations. And while the government paying Rs 4,500 a month was, in his words, “a noble concept,” delays in crediting the amount proved frustrating. “Imagine a candidate travels to Bangalore for his internship but his stipend does not come on the first or even seventh day of the month. How will he pay his rent? He will leave,” says Shantanu.

Akriti Saxena, a BBA graduate from FUEL College, Pune, who completed her internship with Lemon Tree Hotels during the first PMIS pilot, experienced this first-hand. She says her payment used to get delayed because the portal used to be slow and did not immediately reflect that the company had released her payment, which was a condition for the government to release its share of the stipend. Akriti, now 23, says she was able to manage because the company increased her stipend by another Rs 3,500 (companies have the option to do this) and she could stay in the college hostel. “But some people got internships in other cities, and Rs 5,000 would be very less then.”

Ramesh Swamy, director of Unnati Foundation, a not-for-profit which provides vocational training and skilling for underprivileged youth, particularly from rural areas, expresses similar sentiments while lauding the idea of PMIS. “The government thought that it will create a portal and things will happen. But that’s not how it works right?” He said people would automatically apply when they saw a government opportunity, but the biggest challenge, in his experience with working youngsters, was the location of internships. “It would be a very small percentage who would be willing to relocate for an internship. They will think about whether the stipend will cover their expenses, the cost of living in a city, etc.”

Adarsh’s reasons for not taking up the BPCL internship he was selected for – an inadequate stipend, an inconvenient location, an unconnected role – were evidently not unique to him. The ministry of corporate affairs, in a written reply to Parliament on the reasons for the low number of candidates joining and the dropouts, acknowledged as much, stating that candidates mentioned 5-10 km as ideal travel distance and that its own evaluation had found that the monthly allowance was inadequate to meet living and commute costs, especially for those who had internships in different cities or whose locations were in the same city but far away.

Those who completed their internships felt the same way too. Diya Singh, a BBA graduate of computer applications and Akriti’s batchmate in Pune, joined HPCL as an intern in its sales and marketing department in December 2024. “It was difficult to manage the commute and the expenses – it used to take me 2.5 hours from my PG to the office,” says the 24-year-old. Still, Diya, the daughter of a farmer and homemaker who had studied in a government school, says the internship gave her the opportunity to experience the corporate world, though her role was not connected to her course. “I got a sense of what it’s like to work in an office. Before this, I never used to go anywhere alone.”

Many also felt one year was too long for an internship. “It should have been for six months. Then the company can decide if they want to extend,” says Akriti, who interned at the hotel’s banquet sales department.

TeamLease’s Shantanu outlines three reasons companies don’t want to invest in training, or what he calls the “three holes in the bucket”. “First, I train you, but you don’t join me. Or I train you, but you are not productive. Or third, I train you, you join me and then you switch to the competition. That’s why employers are not willing to fund the training but are instead willing to pay a premium for a trained candidate.” This unwillingness to fund training, he says, is still a problem that needs to be solved.

These concerns, such as the need for flexibility in duration, increasing the financial assistance and ensuring its timely disbursal, and others were expressed in an evaluation of the first pilot by the ministry’s research wing in collaboration with four institutes, including IIM-Bangalore and Delhi School of Economics. Data for this evaluation was collected in September and October 2025, through surveys on the phone and focus group discussions with companies and interns. Other reasons for low participation and dropouts mentioned in the Standing Committee report included lack of interest in the roles offered, the age criteria of 21-24 years excluding class 12 graduates and others who might be interested, and the “absence of dedicated institutional mechanisms at the state level, affecting awareness, mobilisation, and retention”. The 2026 Standing Committee report mentioned that the ministry, in its written statement, also said that there was a high number of dropouts immediately after the one-time payment of Rs 6,000 on joining was made.

The ministry did acknowledge some of these concerns and announced a few modifications. Based on the experience of Round 1, this included changes like reducing the number of applications per applicant from five to three, making the name of the company and any additional benefits more visible, and encouraging companies and states to have dedicated PMIS cells. However, these did not address the core complaints from interns, such as one year being too long for an internship. While the number of candidates who applied in Round 2 were higher, the number who eventually joined was lower than in Round 1.

Then, earlier this year, more changes were announced which would be effective from the third pilot of the scheme, which was rolled out in March. These include making the duration of the internships flexible, to 6 or 9 months, depending on the company’s requirements and the role; increasing the monthly allowance to Rs 9,000; easing the age criteria to 18-25 years instead of 21-24 years; widening the pool of eligible companies from top 500 to top 2,000 by average CSR spend, taking in firms with Rs 1,000 crore in turnover or Rs 500 crore in net worth, plus a few categories subject to approval. Companies have been allowed to post internship vacancies, select and onboard candidates continuously, instead of limiting this process to a fixed time period.

At a business summit in mid-May this year, MCA Secretary Deepti Gaur Mukherjee urged companies to actively participate in the scheme as part of their CSR and said the government is open to all suggestions, according to media reports.

CII’s Sougata says the changes make it more convenient for industry, and PMIS is now “a lovely scheme”. “Imagine a child getting trained by the best of the best, and increasing their employability. Companies are always looking for talent – through this, you’ll be training talent for the ecosystem,” he says.

To improve outreach and participation, PMIS is also reportedly collaborating with National Cadet Corps and Mera Yuva Bharat. The scheme can also now onboard interns directly from campus via a “Camp Mode” option.

But whether these changes will be enough to help the scheme reach its target, both in terms of numbers and the larger goal of improving youth employability, is still in question, since other challenges remain.

Holes in the bucket

Chief among these would be whether there is enough incentive for companies to undertake the training of hundreds of interns every year, without clear returns on their investment.

If there was a contract opportunity with BPCL at the end of the internship even if it was for Rs 20,000 in a smaller city, I would have taken it. That tag would have been valuable.

A 22-year-old from Bhilai

Rosa Abraham, lead author of the State of Working India 2026 report and head, Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University, says this is pertinent given the current state of the Indian economy, with multiple layoffs under way across companies. “If there is demand, firms will put in the money to train workers. After all, almost everyone learns on the job anyway. But right now, there’s no incentive to train.”

TeamLease’s Shantanu outlines three reasons companies don’t want to invest in training, or what he calls the “three holes in the bucket”. “First, I train you, but you don’t join me. Or I train you, but you are not productive. Or third, I train you, you join me and then you switch to the competition. That’s why employers are not willing to fund the training but are instead willing to pay a premium for a trained candidate.” This unwillingness to fund training, he says, is still a problem that needs to be solved.

Unnati’s Ramesh says one can’t expect companies to keep taking hundreds of new interns every year. Companies, he suggests, should be given sops so that there is incentive to provide actual training. “You need to have industry on your side – you can’t just put a gun to their head. Otherwise, they’ll show the numbers but there will be no real impact.”

According to data shared by the ministry, HDFC Bank took in the highest number of interns (1,180) in the first two pilots, followed by ONGC (1,039) and NTPC (1,034). A former executive with an automotive firm explained that companies may sign up for PMIS since it’s a scheme driven by the government but they would subsequently prioritise in-house training programmes.

Others have spoken about the lack of suitable candidates. At the business summit in May where the MCA secretary was present, Tata Steel vice-president (corporate services) DB Sundara Raman had said not many students were showing interest in the scheme, and added that more awareness might help.

There is also the question of the kind of training imparted during the internship, and its relevance. Syeda Ajhara Jannat Sultana, who lives in Nazira in Assam’s Sivasagar district, where her father runs a paan shop, describes her 12-month internship with ONGC nearby as a “great experience”. Growing up, crossing the ONGC compound gates in Nazira had always been a dream for Syeda. She says that finally came true thanks to PMIS. During the 12 months, she and over 200 interns were rotated through multiple departments, had the oil and gas industry explained to them, and were taken to a rig, among other things. Some of them, she says, even got to meet the finance minister.

The BA (honours) in education holder did not get a job offer at the end of 12 months. But she says, “I learnt new things, interacted with office people, improved my communication skills – this wouldn’t have happened without the internship.” Currently, she’s working as a front-office executive at a polyclinic and credits her internship experience with helping her land her new job.

Syeda had also made a reel praising PMIS, which was shared by the ministry’s Instagram handle and on other social media platforms. There are several other such complimentary reels on the MCA Instagram page featuring interns at various companies, including from ONGC. At least one of the students featured in the reels alleged they recorded the video at the suggestion of a company executive, their mentor.

APU’s Rosa says it’s important that specific learning outcomes are laid out, mandated and tested. “Then there will be value added. Otherwise we won’t know what’s the learning that comes out of these internships. The fact that many interns dropped out before completion reflects the quality of what’s happening in the internship,” she adds. “If you’re not learning, if you’re not being mentored, there may be little incentive to stay, even though there’s some stipend.” Her colleague and co-author of the State of Working India report, Tamoghna Halder, adds that the proliferation of these government schemes has itself been confusing. “The thinking of the current dispensation in terms of the job transition is in the right direction. But it’s misguided in terms of the number of schemes that have mushroomed. You feel lost,” he says.

For the interns, even those who are appreciative of PMIS, the lack of jobs remains top-of-mind. “After spending so much time on an internship, it should translate to a job,” says Akriti. “Otherwise nobody will join.” Her own internship was in the sales department, an area she never planned to work in, and when the company offered her a job at the end of it, she did not take it. Instead, she plans to study more and try for a government job. But she says the internship helped her become more confident.

What better way to use it than to train many people, with the government contributing a chunk of the costs? There are manpower requirements across companies.

Sougata Roy Choudhury, executive director of the Confederation of Indian Industry

The question about PMIS and job creation has been raised in Parliament as well. But the MCA has never claimed this was a jobs programme. The finance minister said as much in Parliament in February 2025, and the ministry reiterated this in the Lok Sabha that December in its response to a question, stating: “PM Internship scheme is not designed to provide placements. However, appointment/placement offers are being issued by the companies after assessing candidates’ suitability as per their workforce requirement and company policy.”

The fact that PMIS is emphatically positioned as a scheme focused on employability instead of employment may itself be acting as a dampener to potential applicants. As an editorial in Business Standard remarked, “...in a labour market marked by high youth unemployment and underemployment, the absence of a credible employment pathway weakens the scheme’s appeal.”

CII’s Sougata is optimistic PMIS will meet with better success. On the lack of incentives for companies, he says they have to spend CSR funds anyway. “What better way to use it than to train many people, with the government contributing a chunk of the costs? There are manpower requirements across companies.”

Rosa suggests that firms need to be held accountable for learning outcomes and value addition, and a clear pipeline of incentives for firms to sign on. According to TeamLease’s Shantanu, an entire ecosystem is needed to make a scheme like this work, involving educational institutions and skilling systems, instead of just enabling interns and employers to see each other. “Open the scheme up to more employers so that students don’t have to change cities to do the internship. None of this is very difficult to implement.”

Adarsh, the 22-year-old from Bhilai, says that after the modifications to the scheme, he received a call inviting him to join the internship. But he says he didn’t want to. “If there was a contract opportunity with BPCL at the end of the internship even if it was for Rs 20,000 in a smaller city, I would have taken it. That tag would have been valuable.” He remains sceptical about the scheme’s chances of success. “They made so much noise about youth unemployment. But I don’t think it will succeed now either. I don’t think the government is doing enough for the country’s youth.”

*Name changed on request.

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Delhi HC allows Sonam Wangchuk’s shift to private hospital after medical advice

Ritika Jain — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:27:46 GMT

The courtroom on Tuesday was akin to a doctor’s cabin with medical professionals taking turns to explain lab reports.

The Delhi High Court has allowed Gitanjali Angmo to immediately shift her husband Sonam Wangchuk from government-run Safdarjung Hospital to the private Medanta Hospital in Gurugram. It allowed Angmo unfettered access to her husband at the hospital in accordance with medical protocol.

The court directed the private hospital’s director to form a team of doctors to constantly monitor Sonam Wangchuk’s medical condition and administer medication within accepted norms. The court said he shall abide by the medical advice.

The decision by the bench comprising Chief Justice DK Upadhyay and Justice Tejas Karia followed Angmo’s plea challenging Wangchuk’s continued admission at government-run Safdarjung Hospital.

Speaking to the press, Angmo said Wangchuk’s hospitalisation “wasn't needed” and was like “detention”. She further announced Wangchuk’s decision to extend his fast in solidarity with the students who were beaten yesterday.

Though the high court’s Tuesday decision relied on expert medical advice, it gained impetus after senior advocate Akhil Sibal, representing Angmo, drew the court’s attention to a letter handwritten by Wangchuk detailing his experience at Safdarjung Hospital.

In his letter, Wangchuk complained about continuous police presence, his confinement in the hospital room, surveillance, how his visitors were subjected to a search and how his phone was “snatched away” from him.

The doctors chambers in court

The courtroom on Tuesday was akin to a doctor’s cabin with medical professionals taking turns to explain lab reports, what it meant in terms of Wangchuk’s health and their opinion on the future course of medical action. The court had on Monday sought updated lab reports to understand the climate activist’s medical condition on the 21st day of his fast.

Doctors said the reports indicated normal weakness due to the stress of fasting but no intravenous intervention was required at this point.

The doctors further expounded on what happens to a body that is denied sustenance and nutrition to explain the elevated levels of uric acid or the low haemoglobin and platelet levels.

Dr Tandon from AIIMS said haemoglobin levels of a man from Ladakh are generally expected to be higher due to environmental factors. Doctors were unanimous in their opinion that Wangchuk would require constant medical monitoring, preferably in a hospital setting.

A doctor said Wangchuk’s white blood cell (WBC) count was low, resulting in compromised immunity and making him more prone to infection. The doctor said physical interaction with Wangchuk should be limited and if one were to meet him in person, they should be in a clinical gown, cap and mask.

State over everything else

Even as the Centre said it had no problems with Wangchuk’s shift to Medanta “a reputed hospital,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta on Monday essentially said state security would trump any fundamental rights.

There is no right to bodily autonomy when the consequences of the deterioration of one’s health and loss of life has an impact on law and order, Mehta said on Wangchuk’s protest fast. “That is when the state steps in,” Mehta added to justify Delhi Police action taking Wangchuk away from the protest site.

“When someone says I will commit suicide if demands are not met, then in such cases the right doesn’t fly. It then becomes the state’s duty to ensure that the health does deteriorate in such cases,” Mehta said.

Police action has ‘chilling effect’

Gitanjali Angmo had on Sunday filed an urgent plea challenging the Delhi Police action carting Wangchuk away from Jantar Mantar where he was on a protest fast in support of the CJP campaign.

In her plea, Angmo said the manner in which Sonam Wangchuk was carried away by the Delhi Police in front of a crowd in Jantar Mantar was “aimed at thwarting his right to protest”. The plea suggested that the police action was evidently meant to send a “chilling effect within the entire community of supporters” who have been at the protest site for more than a month.

The July 16 order characterised this act as “not being arbitrary”.

The plea said that taking an individual away from his site of his choosing without his consent or any sign of deteriorating health in this case is one of the “most arbitrary” actions a State can take. This arbitrariness is compounded by the fact that he is not allowed to move out of a government-chosen place despite the next of kin as well as the individual asserting their constitutional rights, the petition read, adding that there was not an iota of evidence to show that Wangchuk was “not capable of giving his consent”.

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‘With Wangchuk gone, cops thought hope would die’: The weekend that changed the CJP protest

‘This is about the future’: At Parliament march, students who came without fear

Suhasini Biswas — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 12:54:31 GMT

Students from across India came to Jantar Mantar carrying personal losses and one shared demand.

They came from several states – students, some still in school, who had skipped classes or slipped away without telling their parents to be at Jantar Mantar on July 20. Many were teenagers. Some had lost a year to NEET preparation, some had watched siblings fall into depression after the exam, one had lost his brother to suicide.

What brought them, and many like them, together at Jantar Mantar on Monday was a single demand: the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The Cockroach Janta Party’s ‘Chalo Sansad’ march saw the crowd swell through the day. It started as a peaceful demonstration but the situation eventually turned volatile as the crowd pushed toward barricades and the police responded with lathi charge, tear gas and detentions.

Students Newslaundry spoke to said they had no fear.

‘How will we fight if we are scared?’

Naureen Saba, a 26-year-old member of the DISHA organisation, had said before the march began that she expected a lathi charge, detentions, and tear gas.

“If a person stays silent because of police brutality, that is not a solution. Even if you do something against the government from within your own home, the government can come to your house and slap the NSA or UAPA on you.”

Naureen Saba, a 26-year-old member of the DISHA organisation

Eighteen-year-old Aditya, who had travelled from Bulandshahr with his younger brother after skipping school, echoed her. “How can we fight if we are scared? If we were scared, we would have just stayed home. We wouldn’t be here.”

Seventeen-year-old Areeba, a student at Jamia Millia Islamia, said she wasn’t afraid of the police, and that if students like her stayed quiet now, more suicides would follow.

Mohammed Inayad, also 17 and from Kota, was more forceful. Taking a lathi wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to him, he said. “I am ready to face the police if this is about changing the future of the country and crores of citizens.”

Mohammed Inayad at the Sansad March

Vijay Dev, a student from Ambedkar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, answered a question about the lathi charge in the same tone.

The march grew far larger than it had started as the day went on. Organised under the banner “Chalo Sansad” by the Cockroach Janta Party, it drew students from across the country. By late morning, police had lathi-charged protestors near Parliament Street; by early afternoon, tear gas shells were fired near Shastri Bhawan as demonstrators again tried to push through.

The protest landed on the opening day of Parliament’s monsoon session, where the Lok Sabha was adjourned as opposition MPs pressed the government over the NEET paper leak.

The personal cost

For Naureen, the leak was personal before it was political. Her sister had spent two years preparing for NEET as a dropout, and the paper leak had taken a toll on her mental health that Naureen said she couldn’t ignore – though she also believed people shouldn’t wait until an issue touches their own family before speaking up.

For Aditya, the leak was only the surface of a deeper problem. He pointed to the near-lakh of government schools that have shut down across the country over the past decade, and said the quality of education available to middle- and lower-middle-income families has declined as a result. “In my village, the government schools are on the verge of closing down. We have come down from 100 to 150 children in these schools to just around 6 to 10 now,” he said.

Aditya had come to the Sansad March from UP along with his younger brother.

Sanjay, a student from Kharela, Uttar Pradesh, described a similar decay closer to home – the washroom walls in his college had been broken for years and were never repaired.

Dinesh Chaudhary, 20, had travelled from Mathura without telling his parents, so as not to worry them. He spoke about what an exam costs a family, but his grievance went beyond education. His family are farmers, and in his village, he said, people still have to travel five kilometres for something as basic as water. Even so, he sees education as the thing that could fix everything else, and said he boarded a train for Delhi as soon as he heard about the forced removal of Sonam Wangchuk.

Dinesh holds a placard of AISA

Naresh, 19, from Lalsot in Rajasthan, came on behalf of his younger brother, who had spent three years preparing for NEET only to fall into depression after this year’s leak – a strain worsened by the education loan the family had taken on. His brother couldn’t bring himself to attend the protest. Naresh came in his place, and for others, he said, who hadn’t survived the pressure at all.

Naresh, along with his friend had come from Rajasthan to attend the protest.

Atul said he has barely rested since Sunday.

Atul, 21, from Banaras, had appeared for this year’s NEET and was directly affected by the leak. He described the experience as extremely painful, and said that although his family stood by him throughout, he was too depressed to even sit for the re-examination. By the day of the march, he had been protesting for almost a full day, stopping for only an hour’s rest.

“The people made this government, and the people can remove it too.”

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Under shadow of lathis and barricades: The day the Modi govt finally engaged the CJP‘With Wangchuk gone, cops thought hope would die’: The weekend that changed the CJP protest