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[ad_1] NEW DELHI: Linking the Pahalgam terror strikes by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Pakistan’s ISI to the seizure of 3,000 kg of heroin worth Rs 21,000 crore at Mundra port, National Investigation Agency (NIA) told Supreme Court that this was part of LeT’s narco-trafficking strategy—to raise money for its terror activities and weaken India by selling drugs to the youth.“Look what they did to India at Pahalgam by shooting innocent tourists,” additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati told a bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh on Wednesday and explained how similar consignments were earlier brought to India from Afghanistan using valid documents relating to talc stones. The money raised through the sale of drugs, imported using valid channels and stored at warehouses in Neb Sarai and Alipur in Delhi, was then routed to LeT, they said, while alleging that […]

[ad_1] PAHALGAM: Not long ago, a bandh in J&K would invariably mean a protest against the government orchestrated by a terrorist or separatist group. The page turned Wednesday, the morning after the horrors in Pahalgam, as the valley shut down to disown the perpetrators of what many termed “murder of Kashmiriyat” and an act that had heaped “shame” on Kashmiris.Shops didn’t open, traffic was off the road, and schools and colleges remained closed amid protests resonating from south to north Kashmir against Tuesday’s terrorist attack on a throng of tourists at Pahalgam’s Baisaran meadow.In Srinagar, PDP chief and ex-CM Mehbooba Mufti led a protest against the killings at the historic Lal Chowk. She had given the strike call along with the separatist Hurriyat chief and J&K’s head cleric Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.“We want to convey to the people of the country […]

[ad_1] HAPAT NAR: The funeral of pony handler Syed Adil Hussain Shah, the lone Kashmiri Muslim killed in the terror attack on tourists in Pahalgam’s Baisaran meadow, saw J&K CM Omar Abdullah joining thousands of locals Wednesday in saluting the victim for his reported attempt to save lives by attempting to snatch a terrorist’s rifle.“He tried to stop the attack. We have heard that he was targeted after he tried to snatch the gun…We have to take care of this family. I have come here to assure them that the govt stands with them and will do whatever we can,” Omar said.Based on interactions with the survivors, sources in the security establishment said it was “premature” to confirm the exact circumstances of 30-something Adil’s death. “We are familiar with the account that he was killed while trying to stop the […]

[ad_1] Kaustubh Gunbote with parents & wife (L), Santosh Jagdale and his family PUNE: It was a friendship that had survived most of life's twists and turns. But on their first holiday together with each other's families, to beautiful Pahalgam, both Kaustubh Gunbote (58) and Santosh Jagdale (50) would be shot by terrorists, becoming the two casualties from Pune.Both were shot in front of their families. Gunbote leaves behind a wife, a son and daughter-in-law. Jagdale is survived by his wife and daughter.They were on the holiday with their wives, and Jagdale's daughter, Asawari. "It was the hospital that informed us that they had succumbed to bullet injuries. We three women instantly felt alone," Asawari told TOI on Wednesday. Hours after the attack on Tuesday, she told reporters in Srinagar that the terrorists had asked her father to recite the […]

[ad_1] A man walks past a police barricade on a highway leading to Pahalgam SILCHAR: Debasish Bhattacharya is well-versed in Islamic scripture. That knowledge helped the Hindu associate professor of Bengali in Silchar’s Assam University snatch life from the jaws of death during the terror strike in Pahalgam on Tuesday.With a gun held against his head by one of the terrorists, the 58-year-old Bengali Brahmin was asked to recite the first kalma if he wanted to live. “Overwhelmed by fear, I began to chant the first kalma loudly. After some time, I realised the gunman had retreated, and we scrambled to a fence behind us. We climbed over it and fled into a jungle,” Bhattacharya said.The professor had travelled to Kashmir for a vacation on April 21 with wife Madhumita Bhattacharya, a well-known danseuse, and their son, Drohadeep, a medic […]

[ad_1] NEW DELHI: India's decision to suspend Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) is one of the most stringent actions against Pakistan as the 1960 treaty had survived three wars - 1965, 1971 and Kargil - and multiple terror attacks, largely on humanitarian grounds despite the treaty being in focus as a key tool to punish Islamabad for its nefarious acts.The decision means water flow from the western rivers - Indus, Jhelum and Chenab and their tributaries - will be stopped immediately from wherever it is regulated through dams or whatever little structures India has on these rivers. Though the flow from natural channels will continue, India's move will impact irrigation and drinking water supply to some extent in two of the four provinces of Pakistan during the peak of summer when it needs water the most.Subsequently, India will have to increase […]

[ad_1] NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday placed senior DMK neta V Senthil Balaji, who was reinstated by Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin as minister just two days after being granted bail by the top court in a cash-for-job scam case, between a rock and a hard place by giving him two options — either go to prison again as a minister or resign and enjoy freedom.A stern SC said it will recall its bail order if he continues to be minister as he may influence witnesses.A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and A G Masih said the court had granted bail to Balaji after he claimed to have resigned from govt to dispel concerns about influencing witnesses.You are making mockery of process, SC tells Balaji The bench noted that just two days after Senthil Balaji’s […]

[ad_1] NEW DELHI: Citing errors in four questions, Delhi HC on Wednesday directed the Consortium of National Law Universities (NLUs) to revise the marksheets and republish the final list of selected candidates for the 2025 Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) for undergraduate courses within four weeks.A bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela accepted certain objections raised by the candidates regarding awarding of marks for the four questions, while rejecting some of them, before disposing of the petitions flagging the errors and the appeal filed by the Consortium against a single bench order."Since the error occurred on the part of the Consortium itself, while publishing sets B, C & D of question papers, no fault can be found with the candidates for giving or not giving correct or incorrect answers," the HC noted. "All the […]

[ad_1] A coalition of 12 US states filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in the US Court of International Trade in New York, seeking to overturn President Donald Trump’s tariff policy, which they say is unlawful and has disrupted the national economy. The legal challenge accuses Trump of abusing emergency powers under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to unilaterally impose tariffs without Congressional approval. The plaintiffs argue that only Congress has the authority to levy tariffs and that the president can only invoke IEEPA in response to “unusual and extraordinary threats” from abroad — not to enact sweeping changes to trade policy. “By claiming the authority to impose immense and ever-changing tariffs on whatever goods entering the United States he chooses, for whatever reason he finds convenient to declare an emergency, the President has upended the constitutional order […]

[ad_1] NEW DELHI: Former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra sparked controversy by linking the terrorist attack in Pahalgam to the Muslim community being "mistreated" and "feeling unsafe" in the country, with BJP coming down hard on him for the "irresponsible, divisive and venomous" statement. "When this terrorist act took place, they (terrorists) were looking at IDs, people who were non-Muslims were attacked and messages were given to the prime minister. Why is this happening? Because they are feeling that Muslims are being mistreated in our country," Vadra said. "I see that the minorities are sidelined. When they are praying, they are not allowed to do so on their roofs. If they are in abundance praying on a Thursday or Friday and there is a spillover on the road, they are stopped... there are surveys of mosques," he further […]