The quiet unravelling of the Bhima Koregaon–Elgaar Parishad case in India’s courts tells an uncomfortable story. With the Bombay High Court granting bail to former Delhi University professor Hany Babu, only three of the 16 accused remain behind bars. For most of the rest, freedom has come not through acquittal, but through the slow erosion of a prosecution unable to bring a complex national-security case to trial after seven long years. To mistake this judicial rebuke of pros

India’s largest airline, which built its reputation on clockwork punctuality and ruthless efficiency, has just delivered an object lesson in how scale magnifies failure. Over two days this week, IndiGo cancelled more than 200 flights, delayed hundreds more, and stranded thousands of passengers across the country. Queues coiled through terminals, tempers frayed, and the carefully burnished image of the airline as a low-cost juggernaut that just works took a visible battering.

Maharashtra has just delivered a troubling paradox. The same state that conducted a largely peaceful Lok Sabha election and a hard-fought Assembly poll without disorder now cannot manage violence-free municipal elections. On Tuesday, as voting began across the long-awaited 264 municipal councils and nagar panchayats, the democratic ritual was quickly overshadowed by stone-pelting, vandalism, bogus-voting allegations and open clashes between workers of the very parties that ru

The latest first information report (FIR) filed by Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and six others in the long-running National Herald case is a moral indictment of a political dynasty that has come to embody entitlement without accountability. The allegations, drawn from an Enforcement Directorate (ED) complaint spanning investigations from 2008 to 2024, describe what prosecutors call an “elaborate criminal conspiracy” to take control

For years, India’s economic ascent has been narrated in two voices. One hailing it as the world’s fastest-growing major economy. The other, more sceptical, mutters about unreliable numbers, weak statistics and growth built on shaky accounting. The latest GDP estimates have given that second chorus far less to sing about. According to the latest figures, real GDP grew by 8.2 percent in the second quarter of FY 2025–26 (July–September), and by 8 percent in the first half of the

An Afghan national, once trained by U.S. intelligence and later resettled in America under a Biden-era evacuation programme, is accused of carrying out the deadly ambush near the White House that killed National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom and left another, Andrew Wolfe, critically wounded. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was not an unknown drifter but a former operative of Afghanistan’s elite ‘01 Unit’ - a Special Forces outfit created, trained and armed by the United St

Ahmedabad’s selection as host of the 2030 Commonwealth Games is more than just a sporting milestone for India. It is a strategic wager on our global ambitions, urban future and a firm claim to be taken seriously as a host of mega-events in an era when much of the world is quietly retreating from them. The centenary edition of the Games, which returns to India after two decades, will test not merely our country’s organisational prowess but its political economy of spectacle. F

For years, India’s political class has argued over who gets to speak for Muslims. Rarely has it paused to ask what Muslim women themselves want. Now, a new survey by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan offers an uncomfortably clear answer. Across seven states, among 2,500 Sunni Muslim women who are mostly poor and many without steady incomes, an overwhelming majority wants polygamy to be made legally invalid. They are not demanding cultural confrontation or theological upheav

India’s newest naval induction, INS  Mahe , is an unassuming vessel by the standards of great-power fleets. It is a 78-metre, 900-tonne shallow-water craft designed not for blue-water bravado but for the disciplined business of hunting submarines. Yet its commissioning is far more consequential than its modest frame suggests. As underwater warfare emerges as a pivotal arena of Indo-Pacific rivalry,  Mahe  signals a shift in India’s maritime posture towards stealth, distribute

The Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise has exposed the rot at the heart of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress–controlled West Bengal. What was long decried as ‘partisan scaremongering’ by the Opposition now stands revealed as a sprawling, institutionalised breakdown in which porous borders, forged documents and a carefully curated voter ecosystem have flourished under the West Bengal government’s indulgent gaze. The exercise has thoroug

The tragic death of Wing Commander Namansh Syal during an aerial display in Dubai has pierced the celebratory haze around India’s rising aerospace ambitions. The Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, meant to headline India’s growing prowess and self-reliance, instead nose-dived into the ground during a negative-G turn. A grief-stricken Indian Air Force (IAF) and a shocked nation now face questions that go beyond a single aircraft or accident. While the IAF has launched an investigati

Maharashtra, a state proud of its cosmopolitanism, now finds itself staring into the mirror. An ugly incident wherein a 19-year-old student allegedly took his life in Kalyan after being cornered and harassed in a suburban train for speaking Hindi instead of Marathi has sent a jolt of disbelief through Maharashtra. Police have not established whether the events directly contributed to his death. Yet the very claim has landed like a punch to the gut at a time of rising linguist

The recent rape and murder of a three-year-old girl in Malegaon in Nashik district is a crime so horrific that it numbs the senses. A toddler stepped out to play near her home in Dongarlare village; within three hours she was lured away with a piece of chocolate, assaulted and killed, her small body dumped in the bushes near a mobile tower. While her family is obviously, the outrage has spread across Maharashtra as the state once more confronts its inability to shield its you

For an alliance that claims ideological unity, the Mahayuti has an uncanny knack for public discord. The main parties of the ruling alliance – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena both swear by the same Hindutva creed, often speak the same political language and share the same adversaries. Yet, at times, the coalition behaves less like a cohesive front and more like two rival franchises competing on the same turf. The latest flare-up over political p

India’s 30-run defeat to South Africa at Eden Gardens was a rupture in the mythology of home dominance. For years, touring sides have treated the subcontinent as a labyrinth of spin and pressure, a place where India’s mastery of conditions and disciplined batting made victory improbable. Yet in Kolkata, the roles reversed to the bitterness of fans and other senior cricketers. South Africa, dismissed for a modest 159 after electing to bat first, returned with clarity, discipli

It takes an extraordinary failure of judgment for a school to forget its prime duty of protecting the child. This is precisely what happened in Palghar, where a Class 6 student died days after she was allegedly forced to do 100 sit-ups with her schoolbag strapped to her back for the simple offence of arriving late. The 12-year-old’s death is a searing indictment of an education culture that remains in far too many corners of India both authoritarian and indifferent to the dig

Nearly six years after Maharashtra’s Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) was stitched together in an improbable bid to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) out of power, the alliance looks more frayed than formidable. The Congress’s declaration that it will fight the coming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election on its own made just a day after the Opposition’s bruising defeat in Bihar has triggered a crisis of confidence within the coalition. For a partnership already define

After months of witnessing high-stakes campaigning, Bihar has delivered a political verdict of unusual clarity. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) comprising of the ruling BJP and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and their allies swept the State’s 243 assembly seats to register a landslide victory. The thumping win hands Chief Minister Nitish Kumar a fifth term and gives Prime Minister Narendra Modi another emphatic endorsement in the Hindi heartland. The scale of this victory, which

Politics in Maharashtra, as in much of India, is rarely short of surprises. Yet few spectacles reveal its peculiar logic as vividly as the recent elections to the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA). In a state riven by factional rivalries and shifting alliances, one would expect the cricket turf to mirror the rancour of the Assembly. Instead, cricketing board elections have always been a rare site of bipartisan harmony, where sworn political adversaries shake hands over the bou

The Delhi blast and the arrests that followed have forced India to confront an unsettling evolution in its terror landscape. Among those now in custody is Dr. Shaheen Shahid, a Lucknow-based physician who, investigators say was not merely a sympathiser but an organiser tasked by the Pakistan-backed Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) to build its women’s wing in India, the Jamaatul Mominat. Her alleged mission was to recruit, indoctrinate and mobilise women, particularly educated students