Election in five states in November
Five states will elect new legislatures next month, an independent election panel said on Monday, beginning a process of regional polls ahead of national elections due next year.
The elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Mizoram are expected to give an indication of voter mood, especially in the heartland states which are key to the fortunes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Votes in the five states will be counted on Dec 3 and results expected the same day.
Pakistani cricket reporter leaves India for ‘personal reasons’
A Pakistani sports presenter covering the cricket World Cup left India for “personal reasons”, the sport’s ruling body said on Monday, days after a lawyer complained to police that she had criticised the country.
Indian lawyer Vineet Jindal said he had filed a complaint to authorities against Ms Zainab Abbas for hurting Hindu sentiments and making anti-India statements.
The Deccan Chronicle reported that the presenter was given deportation orders on Sunday, but an International Cricket Council spokesman said she “left for personal reasons”.
Outrage after Indian police dump corpse in canal
Police in Bihar have been caught on camera throwing the body of a road accident victim into a canal, triggering outrage on Monday.
The video shows three policemen carrying the bloodied victim to a bridge barrier before levering him over the edge into the waters below, as bystanders looked on.
Senior police officer Rakesh Kumar of Muzaffarpur district told AFP that his men “threw only the lower-half” of the man into the water as it was badly crushed by a speeding truck and could not be salvaged.
Local media reported that the police fished out some body parts from the canal after the video went viral.
S’pore diplomat spots typo on signboard near high commission
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Sunday was called out by Singapore’s High Commissioner to India Simon Wong, who saw a signboard near the high commission that spelt Singapore as Singapur.
He posted the error on X and asked MCD to do a spell check.
After the image went viral, the authorities wasted no time in rectifying the error. Mr Wong shared a photo of the rectified sign board and thanked the authorities for the “quick fix”.
Author Arundhati Roy faces prosecution for 2010 speech
Booker Prize-winning Indian novelist Arundhati Roy might be prosecuted for a 2010 speech about Kashmir after a top official signed off on the move, local media reported on Tuesday.
A criminal complaint accusing her and several others of sedition had languished in India’s notoriously glacial criminal justice system since it was first filed in 2010.
But on Tuesday, Mr V.K. Saxena, the top official in the administration governing New Delhi, gave approval for the case to proceed before the courts.
The original complaint accuses Roy and others of giving speeches advocating the secession of Kashmir from India.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen not dead, just ‘busy as ever’
Ms Nandana Sen has debunked reports of the death of her father, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, saying he was “totally fine”.
She posted on Twitter a photo of herself with her father and confirmed the 89-year-old was “busy as ever”, teaching two courses a week at Harvard University and working on his gender book.
The fake news was started by a new X account named after Claudia Goldin, who on Monday won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics.
Four dead, 80 injured in train derailment
At least four people were killed and about 80 others injured as an express train derailed in Bihar on Wednesday, a local official told Reuters.
Twenty-one coaches of the North-East Express, which runs from Delhi to Assam, derailed at the Raghunathpur railway station in Bihar’s Buxar district at 4.05pm on Wednesday, general manager of East Central Railway Tarun Prakash said.
The cause of the derailment was not immediately known.
Malaysian man found dead in hotel room in Uttar Pradesh
A Malaysian tourist in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh was found dead in his hotel room on Sunday.
Local reports said Mr Darma Raja RP Sammugam, 73, was part of a group from Malaysia and the cause of his death remains unclear.
Police level forgery, fraud charges against Hero MotoCorp
Delhi police have registered a case against Hero MotoCorp and its chairman Pawan Munjal on allegations of forgery and fraud, according to Reuters.
Brains Logistics, which provided manpower services to Hero, accused the company, Mr Munjal and others of forgery and falsifying account books.
Hero, in a statement to the Bombay Stock Exchange, said the matter dated back to 2009-10 and that Hero had also filed a report against Brains Logistics, in 2013.
Death toll in Himalayan flash floods hits 74
The death toll from flash floods unleashed by a glacial lake bursting its banks in the Himalayas climbed to 74 on Monday, with 101 people still missing days after the calamity struck, according to provincial officials.
Following days of torrential rain in Sikkim, torrents of water swept down narrow river valleys from Lohnak Lake, damaging a dam and wreaking destruction in villages and Rangpo town, about 50km south of the state capital Gangtok.
Sikkim’s Chief Secretary Vijay Bhushan Pathak told Reuters that the search for survivors was hampered by damaged roads, poor communications and bad weather.
Cough syrup firm linked to Uzbek deaths resumes operations
The Uttar Pradesh government has permitted the resumption of most production at a factory owned by Marion Biotech, Reuters reported.
The company produced the cough syrups which Uzbekistan had blamed for the deaths of 65 children there last year.
“There is no known case of a lack of quality in other medicines manufactured by the firm,” the drug controller of the state where Marion is based, and which cancelled the firm’s licence in March, said in the most recent order.
Official Shashi Mohan Gupta said in the Sept 14 order: “Its permission to make products using propylene glycol is cancelled, and it is allowed to make and sell all other products.”
Moon lander’s reawakening unlikely
As a new lunar night begins, Indian space scientists say chances of the Moon lander waking up are “remote”.
The Indian space agency ISRO did not confirm if further efforts will continue to communicate with it, adding that the lander and rover had completed “all their assignments”.
ISRO had hoped that the Vikram lander would wake up on or after Sept 22 when a new lunar day began.
