The chargesheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the Delhi Red Fort blast case has revealed that Dr Umar un Nabi, who was inside the i20 car that exploded, himself pulled the trigger of the explosive. The agency found in its investigation that Nabi was a suicide bomber, and he activated the improvised explosive device (IED), causing a massive explosion outside the Red Fort on November 10, 2025. The blast led to the killing of over a dozen people.
The 7,500-page chargesheet provides the details of the explosion and its links with the Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGuH) terror module as uncovered during the investigation. “…accused Umar Un Nabi (A-1) was inside the car at the time of the explosion, and the IED was initiated by him using the above-mentioned command mechanism,” the chargesheet reportedly states.
Nabi was a doctor by profession and worked as an assistant professor at Al Falah University in Faridabad. His presence inside the exploded i20 car was confirmed by a DNA analysis of the biological material recovered from the blast site. In the chargesheet, the NIA has described Nabi as the mastermind of the explosion. The vehicle used for carrying out the explosion was converted into a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED).
Nabi revived theAl-Qaeda-linked terror module
According to the NIA, Nabi revived the Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGuH) terror module, a designated offshoot of Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), and was its ‘operational in-charge’. The chargesheet reveals that the blast was not a sudden attack but a well-planned conspiracy. Since early 2022, Nabi had been working to revive the dormant AGuH terror module and build a network of terrorists to engage in terrorist activities. He procured weapons and ammunition to be used in the terrorist activities of his terror group.
The charge sheet says that he had been plotting the Red Fort blast for at least two years. He and his associates had been visiting the blast site repeatedly. The chargesheet notes that Nabi and his associates conducted a reconnaissance of the Red Fort in December 2023. However, the blast did not happen on the decided day, but was preponed and carried out in panic after Nabi’s associates were arrested by authorities in Srinagar. The Jihadists selected the Red Fort to carry out the blast as they perceived it as a “symbol of the Indian state”.
NIA found terrorist literature promoting Jihad
During the investigation, the NIA found documents containing detailed instructions and practical guidance for the members of his terror module. The states that the contents of the documents included instructions on operational security, including concealment, stealth infiltration, and the creation of multiple false identities to evade law enforcement.
The documents contained attack strategies, including ambush-style targeted attacks, lone-wolf operations, and martyrdom or suicide strikes. The documents included “Definition of Jihad”, “The Requirements of Jihad”, “The 21 Aims and Objectives of Jihad”, “39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad”, and “44 Ways to Support Jihad”. An AQAP-linked manual, titled “Lone Mujahid Pocket Book/How to Become an Assassin,” was also found by the NIA during the investigation.
The NIA found handwritten notes from his flat at Al-Falah University, revealing the Jihadi network’s intentions of overthrowing democracy and imposing Sharia law. The terrorist network advocated for Jihad against existing political systems, which they described as “Satanic and tyrannical systems”.
The documentary evidence disclosed that the terror group presented Jihad as a religious duty rather than a personal choice. The documents contained messages like “Muslims cannot attain honour without jihad” and called for Gazwa-e-Hind, and praised Islamic insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US.
In a major infrastructural achievement, India’s ambitious rail infrastructure development project, the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), became fully operational. On Tuesday (September 8, 2026), Prime Minister Modi inaugurated the final sections of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC), one of the two parts of the DFC.
The Prime Minister inaugurated three remaining sections of the WDFC, namely, New Sanand-North-New Makarpura, New Umbergaon-New Saphale, and New Saphale-New JNPT. The sections stretched up to 326 km were built at a cost of over ₹20,700 crore. They link the Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai, Maharashtra, with Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, where it intersects with the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC).
With the inauguration of three sections, the entire stretch of 2,843-km dedicated freight network, combining the 1,506-km WDFC and the 1,337-km-long Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC), has become operational.
Modi government made the project a reality
The freight network project was conceived in 2004, during the BJP coalition government led by the late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. In 2006, the two corridors were approved by the UPA-I government led by the late PM Manmohan Singh. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) was incorporated to execute the project.
However, the project existed only on paper till 2014, after which the project was revived by the Modi government. The government resolved the long-pending issues that blocked the project, and it finally became a reality about two decades after its approval.
India is the only country with a fully electrified DFC
With the completion of the DFC, India has become the only country with a fully electrified dedicated freight corridor built for routine double-stack container operations. The electric double-stack arrangement enables two containers to be carried one above the other, leading to reduced time and fuel consumption and more cargo per train.
The rail tracks in the EDFC and the WDFC have been specifically designed for the electric double-stack arrangement, with overhead wires fitted higher than usual. Even though both corridors are capable of double-stack container operations, they are more prominent on the WDFC. The cargo on the EDFC mostly carries coal, steel, food grain, and other bulk mineral freight.
As per the railways, the DFCCIL handled approximately 5.21 lakh freight train trips, averaging around 435 trains per day as of August 31, 2026. The DFCCIL has generated approximately 658 billion Gross Tonne Kilometres (GTKM) and 360 billion Net Tonne Kilometres (NTKM). At present, 27% of the total freight is carried via rail route. The National Rail Plan intends to increase this share by 45% by 2030. In the last financial year, the Railways recorded its highest-ever loading of 1,670 million tonnes.
The Eastern and the Western freight corridors
The existing freight network comprises the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) and the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor. The EDFC starts from New Sahnewal in Punjab and extends up to New Sonnagar in Bihar via Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and connects four states: Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.
The EDFC from Ludhiana (Punjab) to Sonnagar (Bihar) became fully operational in October 2023. Subsequently, a proposed 538-km Sonnagar-Dankuni (West Bengal) extension was taken out of the sanctioned DFC project and planned separately under the PPP model.
The WDFC starts from New Dadri in Uttar Pradesh and extends up to New Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Maharashtra. It links the National Capital Region and the industrial belts of northern and western India directly to the country’s busiest container port while passing through Haryana, Rajasthan, and Gujarat.
An expanding network
The freight corridor will not be limited to the Eastern and Western corridors and is set to be expanded. This year’s Union Budget announced a third Dedicated Freight Corridor proposed to start from Dankuni in West Bengal and connect to Surat in Gujarat, linking six states: West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat, on the way.
According to Dr Swapnil Nila, Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO), Central Railway, the government is examining the possibility of developing a new freight corridor parallel to the Samruddhi Mahamarg in Maharashtra.
How the DFC will help the economy
The project will provide a major boost to the economy as it will strengthen connectivity between industrial centres and ports, thereby facilitating faster movement of goods. It is also expected to reduce logistics costs and help reduce pressure on the usual railway tracks where passenger trains run.
A dedicated freight network will provide uninterrupted movement of cargo to the JNPT as freight containers will move directly between the ports and industries in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi-NCR, and western Uttar Pradesh. This will lead to increased revenue for the Railways, whose earnings through freight account for over 65 per cent of its total revenue. Smoother and heavier freight movements on the DFC will significantly increase this amount.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) has denied reports that Bharat Ratna awardee and eminent scientist Professor C.N.R. Rao was served a notice over a “self-name mismatch” during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Karnataka.
The clarification came after reports claimed that Rao had been asked to appear for a hearing because of a discrepancy in his name between the 2002 electoral roll and the current voter list. According to those reports, his name appeared as “Prof. C.N.R. Rao” in the older roll, while the current roll reportedly mentioned it as “Proff. C.N.R. Rao”, with an additional “f”.
However, the ECI clarified that this information is “factually incorrect”.
According to the Commission, Rao’s name in the 2002 electoral roll actually appears as “Rama S/O H. Nagesh”, while the current electoral roll lists him as “Proff. C.N.R. Rao S/O Nagesh Rav. H.” The ECI also clarified that it has not served any notice to Rao or his family so far, taking into account his stature and contribution to the country.
ECI rejects ‘extra f’ claim
The clarification effectively rules out the earlier claim that Rao was asked to appear before election officials because the word “Prof” had been incorrectly recorded as “Proff”.
Reports had said that the 92-year-old scientist was facing a “self-name mismatch” and that a hearing had been scheduled in Bengaluru’s Malleshwaram area, near the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).
The latest ECI statement, however, makes it clear that no such notice has been issued to Rao or his family at present. It also specifically rejected the claim that the alleged notice was linked to an extra “f” in his name.
C.N.R. Rao’s contribution to science
Prof. C.N.R. Rao has made major contributions to solid-state and structural chemistry and is considered one of the most decorated scientists in his field. His work has covered areas including solid-state materials, nanomaterials and structural chemistry, helping open new areas of research in modern chemistry.
He founded the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit at IISc in 1976 and later served as the institute’s director from 1984 to 1994. He also founded the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Jakkur and served as its founding president.
His contribution was not limited to scientific research. Rao also played an important role in shaping India’s science and research policies. Over the years, he has received several major national and international honours.
Bharat Ratna among several major honours
Rao has received some of the country’s highest civilian honours and several major international awards. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, and became the third scientist to receive the award.
His other honours include the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Shri and Karnataka Ratna, besides numerous other awards and recognitions.
Earlier reports had raised questions
The reports about the alleged SIR notice had attracted attention because of Rao’s age and stature as a Bharat Ratna awardee. A representative from his office had earlier said that they had not received any physical notice.
“It appears to have been put online on the ECI website. I am not clear about that one; I have not seen it,” the representative had said. The representative had also said that, apart from the alleged additional letter in “Proff”, there did not appear to be any other issue with the electoral records.
“According to the office records and email, there is no notice as of now. A physical letter also has not reached us,” the representative said.
However, following the ECI’s latest clarification, those earlier reports cannot be treated as an accurate account of the current position. The Commission has specifically denied issuing such a notice to Rao or his family and has rejected the claim about the alleged “extra f” mismatch.
SIR exercise in Karnataka
The clarification comes amid Karnataka’s ongoing SIR exercise, under which electoral records are being checked against older rolls, and voters are being flagged in cases involving discrepancies or where their names cannot be mapped.
The Chief Electoral Officer’s office had earlier said that more than 43.81 lakh notices had been generated as part of the exercise, while around 7.31 lakh notices had been delivered to electors.
The notices relate to categories including “no mapping” and “anomalies”, according to officials.
Other prominent personalities have also faced scrutiny during the electoral roll revision exercise. Padma Shri awardee and social worker Harekala Hajabba was among those whose name was reportedly flagged over discrepancies, though the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer later clarified that the issue in his case had been resolved.
In Rao’s case, however, the ECI has now made its position clear: no SIR notice has been issued to the Bharat Ratna scientist or his family so far, and reports claiming that he was served a notice over an extra “f” in his name are factually incorrect, according to the Commission.
Days after claiming to have disrupted a Chinese botnet network that was allegedly targeting American critical infrastructure, the US has accused Chinese AI companies of ‘copying’ proprietary functionalities and capabilities of US AI companies. America’s Cyber Defense Agency, Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said in a release issued on 8th September that Chinese AI companies are conducting “industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns” to extract proprietary capabilities from leading AI models.
“China-based artificial intelligence (AI) companies are conducting systematic extraction of proprietary functionalities and capabilities of U.S. AI companies’ models through industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns that form the core—not merely a supplement—of their AI development strategy,” the press release stated.
The US authorities acknowledged that distillation is a legitimate and useful technique in AI research. However, the US officials claimed that China-based AI companies are engaging in “aggressive, malicious, and targeted distillation activities at an industrial scale that extract restricted proprietary functionalities and capabilities of U.S. frontier AI models.”
DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba and other Chinese AI companies with CCP awareness are extracting capabilities of top US AI models like Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok
US officials have alleged that top Chinese AI models DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI extracted “billions of tokens across millions of exchanges/requests” from US frontier AI models, including variants of Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok, since at least late 2024. These alleged distillation campaigns are allegedly being conducted with Chinese government awareness.
The US authorities alleged that since 2024, DeepSeek has conducted organised distillation campaigns targeting reasoning capabilities, specialised optimisations, and domain-specific functions to train its R1 and V3 models.
Similarly, Alibaba allegedly leveraged industrial-scale distillation to improve its Qwen family of AI models.
The US authorities claimed that top Chinese AI models, including Moonshot AI, MiniMax, Stepfun, and Z.AI, also engaged in “malicious knowledge distillation of U.S. AI companies’ models.”
“Likely with Chinese government awareness, DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI extracted billions of tokens across millions of exchanges/requests from U.S. frontier AI models, including variants of Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok, since at least late 2024. DeepSeek has conducted organized campaigns since at least 2024 targeting reasoning capabilities, specialized optimizations, and domain-specific functions to train its R1 and V3 models. Alibaba leveraged industrial-scale distillation to improve the company’s Qwen family of AI models. Moonshot AI, MiniMax, Stepfun, and Z.AI also engaged in malicious knowledge distillation of U.S. AI companies’ models,” the US officials said.
The modus operandi
Explaining the modus operandi of the Chinese distillation campaigns targeting US frontier AI models, the US authorities said that several top Chinese AI companies route distillation requests via multiple pathways to obtain unauthorised access and violate the terms of the targeted US AI companies.
These pathways include native application programming interfaces (APIs), remote cloud providers, and third-party aggregators that automatically obfuscate user metadata to avoid detection.
In addition, the China-based AI companies allegedly use a gray market of proxies known as “transfer stations” to bypass geographic restrictions placed by US AI companies.
Through bulk procurement of the U.S. AI companies’ premium subscriptions shared across teams of developers, several China-based AI companies secure cost savings for their industrial-scale distillation campaigns.
Various Chinese AI companies have allegedly conducted prompt injection techniques against large language models (LLMs) by inserting prompts specifically designed for jailbreaking.
The advanced distillation methods include chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning extraction, automated failover between pathways during blocking attempts, and sophisticated quality evaluation frameworks to detect defensive countermeasures. This tactic was used by DeepSeek.
Notably, the CoT data teaches student models not only factual knowledge but reasoning methodologies for complex agentic tasks, coding challenges, and logical proofs.
According to the US authorities, these Chinese AI entities use aggressive and adaptive discovery to systematically identify valuable extractable data.
With the help of these tactics, China-based AI models demonstrate rapid operational adaptation. The US officials said that the Chinese AI model MiniMax redirected exchanges to a new Claude model within 24 hours of release, demonstrating real-time provider monitoring and pre-positioned infrastructure for immediate retargeting.
Chinese AI companies employing industrial-scale distillation against US AI models are able to not only reduce financial expenditures in training a frontier model but also significantly cut AI development timelines.
The US officials have alleged that the Chinese AI company DeepSeek conducted organised distillation campaigns against US frontier AI models, particularly those of Claude, Gemini, GPT, and Grok.
“DeepSeek has been conducting an organized distillation campaign against U.S. AI companies’ frontier AI models since at least late 2024 to generate synthetic training data for its models, including R1, released in early 2025. The company targeted specific knowledge domains to extract proprietary functionality and reasoning capabilities to reduce their compute and research costs. DeepSeek’s publicly quoted training costs of $5.6M are misleading as it does not include the true cost of the data acquired through extensive malicious distillation.”
Similarly, Moonshot AI targeted Claude Fable 5 data to train its Kimi-K3 model and GPT-4o data to train its Kimi-K2 model in mid-2025. Moonshot AI used various models of Claude, GPT, Gemini, Nano Banana, and Grok, distill SFT optimisation, reinforcement learning (RL), software engineering, and math capabilities.
Source: US CISA press release
The US CISA has recommended three immediate actions to the US AI companies. It urged the AI companies to implement comprehensive detection and mitigation, deploy targeted response changes, and establish cross-organisation intelligence sharing.
China denies US’s ‘malicious copying of AI tech’ allegations
Hitting back at the US, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked the US to “refrain from making unfounded accusations or smears” against China.
“China’s AI development is the result of high-level technological self-reliance and strength. We maintain that all parties should strengthen cooperation to promote AI development that is open, inclusive, universally beneficial and oriented toward the common good,” the ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a press conference.
Chinese AI models offering features equivalent to those offered by expensive US AI models at way lesser costs
While China denies any wrongdoing the US has accused it of, the unreal price gaps between equivalent US and Chinese AI models raise suspicion.
Pertinently, knowledge distillation trains a student model on the outputs, often reasoning traces, of a stronger teacher model. If done legitimately on one’s own large model or open weights it creates smaller, cheaper and faster models. However, if conducted at industrial scale against a competitor’s APIs without proper permission, distillation allows a lab acquire specialised behaviours without having to pay the full cost of pre-training from scratch or operating equivalent post-training compute.
Chinese labs have, as per US allegations, achieved architectural efficiency, reinforcement-learning techniques for reasoning, like DeepSeek-R1 style, force efficiency from US chip export controls, and aggressive price competition and open-weight releases that recruit global inference providers and fine-tuners.
Consequently, AI models like DeepSeek V3/V4/R1, Alibaba Qwen series, Moonshot Kimi K2/K3, Z.AI GLM, and MiniMax, which score close to or occasionally match mid-to-high US models on coding, math, reasoning and agentic benchmark, while API prices are usually 5 to 7x lower.
For example, while Chinese DeepSeek V4 Flash costs around $0.14/M input and $0.28/M output tokens, the rates of comparable GPT or Claude mid-tiers are far higher. Similarly, while DeepSeek V4 Pro costs around $0.435/$0.87, key flagship US models cost $5/$25–30.
While US labs still lead on the latest flagship models, safety alignments, various enterprise features, and ecosystem lock-in, for many production workloads, the performance-per-dollar gap became significant.
With Chinese models capturing around 30-46% of US enterprise token share on AI API aggregators like OpenRouter at peaks. Result? The enterprises facing high bills moved traffic. In very short time, Chinese AI models emerged as rivals to the US ones.
This forced top US AI companies to cut prices. OpenAI reduced the price of its GPT-5.6 Luna by 80%, to $0.20/M input and $1.20/M output, Terra by 20% though flagship Sol’s high pricing remained unchanged. In fact, Open AI executives have openly compared the new cheaper tiers to the Chinese AI models like Z. AI’s GLM. Anthropic also grappled with similar pressure.
This indicates a classic commoditisation dynamic wherein high fixed costs of frontier pre-training require high inference prices to recoup, while low-cost competitors, be it though open weights, efficiency, subsidies, or alleged free-riding, particularly large-scale distillation campaigns against rival AI models, collapse those prices.
The US allegations suggest that besides efficiency work and open-source distribution, distillation of industrial scale is allowing Chinese AI companies to shorten development timelines and slash compute costs for acquiring specific capabilities that would otherwise need expensive original research and training runs, and thus produce models good enough for most tasks for a fraction of the price high-priced US advanced agentic AI models can perform.
It is notable that Chinese labs have previously published genuine technical contributions and open-source Chinese models have themselves got distilled by others. However, distillation of industrial scale becoming a core strategy, as alleged by the US, has accelerated catch up for Chinese AI models and enabled the price pressure on US AI companies. For US, this is an IP theft and Terms of Use violation, and the US authorities see it as a national security issue, since capabilities were transferred without original safety work.
It appears that Chinese tech entities are countering the strategy of US AI models of producing highly advanced models and charging high prices, by commoditising frontier-level AI. The claims by US officials that Chinese AI companies are doing industrial scale distillation of frontier US AI models lends further credence to the accusations that Chinese AI strategy is nothing but a sophisticated ‘copy the rival’s proprietary functionalities and capabilities for low costs, produce equivalent models, and offer them at way cheaper prices than rivals’ shortcut.
The Middle East is once again staring at the possibility of a major regional conflagration, but what makes the present situation particularly dangerous is that the region is not dealing with a single isolated conflict anymore, with the United States and Iran already locked in a confrontation around the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz while Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have simultaneously escalated their attacks against Saudi Arabia, striking civilian and economic infrastructure and threatening to turn another long-running proxy conflict into a much wider war.
At least 73 people were injured after the Houthis launched a series of missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia, with the strikes targeting several locations in the southern part of the kingdom, including energy installations, Abha International Airport and King Khalid air base, while Saudi authorities reported fires and temporary disruptions at some energy facilities.
The Houthis have claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they targeted Saudi military and economic infrastructure, including facilities belonging to Saudi Aramco, while Riyadh has vowed to take all necessary measures to defend its sovereignty and neutralise what it describes as a growing threat from the Iran-backed militia.
On the surface, this may appear to be another escalation in Yemen’s decade-long civil war, but that would be a dangerously simplistic reading of what is happening because the Houthi-Saudi confrontation is unfolding at precisely the moment when another and potentially far more consequential confrontation is taking place between Washington and Tehran around the Strait of Hormuz.
The Middle East is therefore beginning to look less like a collection of separate conflicts and increasingly like one interconnected battlefield.
The Houthis have reopened the Saudi front
The Houthi movement seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014 and subsequently became one of the most powerful armed groups in the region, receiving extensive political and military backing from Iran while fighting Yemen’s internationally recognised government, which has in turn received support from Saudi Arabia and its regional allies.
Saudi Arabia led a military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015, beginning a conflict that quickly became one of the most prominent examples of the wider Saudi-Iranian rivalry playing out through proxy forces, although a UN-backed truce in 2022 substantially reduced the intensity of fighting and created hopes that the two sides might eventually move towards a political settlement.
Those hopes are now looking increasingly fragile.
The Saudi-backed Yemeni government has launched a counteroffensive against Houthi forces, while the Houthis have responded by expanding their attacks beyond Yemen and striking targets inside Saudi Arabia, with the latest barrage being particularly significant because the militants did not restrict themselves to military targets but also targeted civilian and economic infrastructure.
That distinction matters because Saudi Arabia is not merely another country involved in the Yemen conflict; it is the world’s largest oil exporter and one of the central pillars of the global energy market, which means that attacks on its energy infrastructure can have consequences far beyond the immediate battlefield.
Why Riyadh cannot simply absorb the attacks
Saudi Arabia has repeatedly demonstrated that it will not tolerate sustained attacks on its territory, particularly when those attacks threaten the country’s oil infrastructure, airports and other strategic economic assets, and the latest strikes have therefore created a situation in which Riyadh faces considerable pressure to retaliate.
Saudi authorities have already described the latest escalation as dangerous, while the Saudi-led coalition has warned that it will take necessary operational measures to neutralise the threat posed by the Houthis.
The problem is that retaliation itself could become the trigger for another round of escalation, because a Saudi strike against Houthi positions could lead the militants to launch another barrage against Saudi cities or energy facilities, which could then force Riyadh to respond even more forcefully.
This is the classic escalation trap that has repeatedly transformed limited confrontations in the Middle East into prolonged wars, with each side insisting that it is merely responding to the other while simultaneously increasing the scale and intensity of its own military operations.
And there is another reason the latest attacks are particularly worrying: the Houthis have demonstrated that they are willing to use economic warfare as part of their military strategy.
Iran’s shadow over the Houthi escalation
It would be inaccurate to claim, without evidence, that Iran directly ordered every Houthi attack against Saudi Arabia, because the Houthis have their own political objectives, military command structure and calculations concerning Yemen.
At the same time, it would be equally naive to pretend that Iran’s role is irrelevant.
The Houthis are one of the most important components of Iran’s regional network of armed partners, and their position along the Red Sea gives Tehran an important strategic pressure point against Saudi Arabia and against international shipping moving through one of the world’s most important maritime corridors.
This means that even when Tehran is not directly involved in a particular Houthi operation, the existence of a powerful Iran-backed force capable of threatening Saudi territory and Red Sea shipping inevitably complicates the strategic calculations of Riyadh, Washington and other Gulf states.
The timing becomes even more significant because Iran itself is currently under intense pressure from the United States.
The Strait of Hormuz is already another battlefield
The United States and Iran are locked in a confrontation around the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, through which a huge share of the world’s oil supplies traditionally passes.
The conflict has already spilt into maritime operations, with American and Iranian forces confronting each other around commercial shipping and energy transportation, creating fears that a prolonged confrontation could disrupt one of the world’s most important energy corridors.
This is what makes the Houthi escalation so dangerous.
The Houthis operate on the western side of the Arabian Peninsula, near the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb, while Iran and the United States are confronting each other on the eastern side around Hormuz.
These are not two completely disconnected theatres.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, while the Gulf of Aden opens into the Arabian Sea and the wider Indian Ocean, creating a maritime chain that ultimately links the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf through the surrounding waterways.
If both Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb become seriously disrupted at the same time, the consequences for global energy markets and international shipping could be enormous.
The real danger is the merging of conflicts
For years, policymakers could treat the Yemen war, the Iran-Saudi rivalry and the US-Iran confrontation as separate geopolitical problems, but the latest developments make that separation increasingly difficult because the same actors, alliances, shipping routes and energy infrastructure are now appearing across multiple theatres.
The Houthis have already threatened Red Sea shipping and launched attacks against Saudi Arabia, while Iran remains locked in its confrontation with Washington, and Saudi Arabia finds itself attempting to protect its territory and energy infrastructure without allowing the conflict to spiral completely out of control.
If Saudi Arabia responds with a major military campaign against the Houthis, the militants could intensify their attacks, potentially drawing Iran more directly into the confrontation or prompting the United States to increase military assistance to Riyadh.
At that stage, what began as a Saudi-Houthi confrontation could rapidly become another front in the wider US-Iran conflict.
That is the scenario that should worry the world.
Saudi oil infrastructure is the biggest vulnerability
The targeting of Saudi energy infrastructure is particularly significant because Saudi Arabia sits at the centre of the global oil market, and even temporary disruptions can create uncertainty among traders, insurers and energy companies.
The latest attacks reportedly caused fires at several locations and temporarily halted operations at some energy facilities.
A sustained campaign against Saudi oil infrastructure would be an entirely different proposition, however, because repeated attacks on refineries, pipelines, processing facilities or export infrastructure could create a genuine supply shock at precisely the moment when global energy markets are already dealing with uncertainty around Hormuz.
That could push crude prices higher, increase transportation and manufacturing costs and create another wave of inflation across countries that are already struggling with elevated energy and commodity prices.
In other words, the Houthis do not need to destroy Saudi Arabia’s entire oil industry to create global economic damage; they merely need to convince markets that Saudi energy infrastructure is no longer reliably secure.
The Red Sea could become a war zone again
The other major concern is international shipping.
The Houthis have already demonstrated their ability to threaten commercial vessels operating around the Red Sea, and any sustained expansion of their attacks could once again force shipping companies to avoid the Suez route and send vessels around the Cape of Good Hope.
That would add days or even weeks to shipping journeys, increase fuel consumption, raise insurance premiums and ultimately increase the cost of transporting goods between Asia and Europe.
For India, which has significant commercial and energy interests in the Gulf and relies heavily on maritime trade, this is not an abstract geopolitical problem happening somewhere far away.
A simultaneous disruption of Hormuz and the Red Sea would put pressure on both India’s energy imports and its shipping costs, while any sustained increase in global crude prices could also affect the country’s import bill, inflation and broader economic stability.
Could this become another Middle Eastern war?
There are several possible outcomes, and the least dangerous would involve Saudi Arabia carrying out limited retaliatory strikes while simultaneously using diplomatic channels to prevent the confrontation from escalating into a full-scale campaign.
The more dangerous possibility is that the Yemen war simply returns to the intensity seen during its worst years, with Saudi-backed forces advancing inside Yemen while the Houthis respond with increasingly sophisticated missile and drone attacks against Saudi territory and shipping.
But the nightmare scenario is the third one: the conflicts merge.
If the US-Iran confrontation around Hormuz continues to intensify, while the Houthis simultaneously increase pressure on Saudi Arabia and Red Sea shipping, Riyadh could find itself pulled deeper into the wider confrontation, potentially bringing the United States and other Gulf states into an increasingly interconnected military conflict.
At that point, the world would no longer be dealing with a series of separate Middle Eastern crises.
It would be dealing with a regional war.
The Middle East is once again playing with fire
The most dangerous feature of the current situation is not simply that the Houthis have attacked Saudi Arabia, nor that Saudi Arabia has promised retaliation, but that these events are occurring in an already unstable regional environment in which Iran, the United States, Saudi Arabia and multiple armed groups are operating across interconnected theatres.
One attack can trigger another, a retaliation can provoke a counter-retaliation, and a conflict that begins with missiles and drones can eventually draw in air forces, naval assets and entire countries that initially had every intention of staying out.
The Middle East has witnessed this pattern repeatedly, and there is little reason to assume that the present crisis will automatically remain contained.
The Houthi attack on Saudi Arabia could therefore prove to be much more consequential than another episode in Yemen’s endless war, because it has the potential to connect the Yemen conflict with the US-Iran confrontation, threaten Saudi Arabia’s critical energy infrastructure and place both the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz under simultaneous pressure.
The world should therefore not make the mistake of looking at the Houthi attacks as an isolated Yemen story.
Because if the Houthis continue striking Saudi Arabia, if Riyadh responds with overwhelming force, if Iran’s confrontation with Washington continues to intensify and if shipping through the region is increasingly threatened, the Middle East could find itself moving from multiple contained conflicts towards one interconnected regional war.
And when that happens, the consequences will not stop at the borders of the Middle East; they will arrive at petrol pumps, shipping terminals, factories and household budgets across the world.
A devotional film made on a reported budget of around ₹2 crore has turned into one of the most surprising box-office success stories of 2026. Vishal Chaturvedi’sHanuman Ansh, based on the life and spiritual journey of Neem Karoli Baba, started with a limited theatrical release but gradually found a much larger audience.
The film has now crossed the ₹100-crore mark in India and is running strong even in its fifth week. By Day 32, it had collected around ₹132 crore net in India, while its gross collection stood at about ₹156.20 crore. The film’s performance is particularly striking because it began its theatrical journey on 7th August with just 25 screens and an opening collection of only around ₹10 lakh.
From a slow start to a box-office phenomenon
Unlike big-budget releases that usually make most of their money during the opening weekend, Hanuman Ansh took a different route. Its initial weeks were modest, but the film slowly gained attention through word-of-mouth.
The change became clear from its third week. After earning ₹1.08 crore in the first week and around ₹40 lakh in the second week, the film began picking up. It crossed the ₹1-crore mark in a single day during its third week, earning ₹2.50 crore on its third Sunday. It eventually collected ₹10.40 crore in the third week.
The momentum became even stronger in the fourth week, when its weekly collection increased nearly six times. By the fifth weekend, the film was putting up numbers that few expected from a film made on such a small budget.
It earned ₹10 crore on Friday, ₹16.50 crore on Saturday and ₹22.75 crore on Sunday. Its fifth-weekend collection reached ₹49.25 crore. On the following Monday, it added another ₹10 crore despite a 56% drop from Sunday.
By the first four days of its fifth week, the film had already earned ₹59.25 crore. Its fifth-week run also saw it compete strongly with the newer Gurmeet Singh’s action-crime thriller Mirzapur: The Movie.
Bigger than its budget
The biggest talking point around Hanuman Ansh is not just its total collection but the money it has made compared with its production cost.
Made on a budget reportedly less than ₹2 crore, the film has earned more than 60 times its reported budget. Its fifth-week performance even put it ahead of several major blockbusters in terms of fifth-weekend earnings. The film was reported to have recorded the biggest fifth-weekend haul in Indian box-office history, surpassing Dhurandhar.
The film has also been described by trade trackers as one of the most financially rewarding Indian films in recent memory. With its theatrical run continuing, estimates in the source material suggested that its collection could move towards the ₹150-crore mark.
The film is also expanding internationally. Hombale Films has acquired its global distribution rights, with the worldwide release scheduled for 11th of September.
What is Hanuman Ansh about?
Directed and produced by Dr Vishal Chaturvedi, Hanuman Ansh is inspired by his book Divine Detour: That Changed My Life, which focuses on Neem Karoli Baba.
Shobhinaw Satyaa plays Neem Karoli Baba, while Chandan Anand is also part of the lead cast. The film tells the story of Lakshmi Narayan, a young boy living in pre-Independence India. After the death of his mother, he leaves home in search of God. His journey across North India eventually leads to his transformation into Neem Karoli Baba.
The film is planned as the first part of a trilogy inspired by Divine Detour: That Changed My Life. It has been produced by Ragini S, Namrata G Singh, Anupriya A Nagar and Dr Vishal Chaturvedi under Swambhu Media Network and Holy Cow Home Productions.
Source: Amazon
Who was Neem Karoli Baba?
The success of Hanuman Ansh has also brought renewed attention to the life of Neem Karoli Baba, popularly known by his followers as Maharaj-ji.
Neem Karoli Baba was born as Laxman Narayan Sharma around 1900 in Akbarpur village of Uttar Pradesh’s Firozabad district. He came from a wealthy Brahmin family. According to the details shared about his life, he experienced a strong spiritual urge at a young age and left home to travel as a sadhu across northern India.
Source: NKB Ashram
His father eventually found him and persuaded him to return home. Baba later married and had two sons and a daughter. However, his spiritual calling continued. In 1958, he left his family permanently and devoted the final 15 years of his life to serving people and spreading divine love.
His spiritual journey became closely associated with Kainchi Dham, a temple complex located on the banks of the Kosi River in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon region.
Kainchi Dham and his global influence
Neem Karoli Baba’s influence eventually reached far beyond India. Kainchi Dham became a major spiritual destination, attracting visitors from across the world.
His name also became familiar in global technology and popular culture. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has spoken about visiting the ashram after Steve Jobs recommended the place to him. Zuckerberg had planned to stay for a day but ended up spending two days there.
Steve Jobs himself had visited the ashram with his friend Dan Kottke, although he could not meet Neem Karoli Baba because Baba had already passed away. Hollywood actress Julia Roberts has also spoken about being influenced by him and being drawn towards Hinduism.
Kainchi Dham (Source: Travellopedia)
Among the foreign devotees and visitors associated with Neem Karoli Baba are spiritual figures such as Ram Dass and Ma Jaya, musicians Jai Uttal and Krishna Das, humanitarian Larry Brilliant, scholar and writer Yvette Rosser, and psychologist Daniel Goleman.
A legacy of temples and service
Neem Karoli Baba also established temples dedicated to Lord Hanuman at several places. The first Hanuman temple associated with him was inaugurated on 15th June, 1964, followed by another temple in Vrindavan. His temples and ashrams later spread to several locations, including Lucknow and Texas in the US. According to his website, Maharaj-ji established at least 108 temples.
In the late 1960s, American spiritual seeker Baba Ram Dass wrote books about Neem Karoli Baba, helping introduce his teachings to a wider Western audience. Hundreds of Westerners subsequently travelled to India to seek his darshan.
Neem Karoli Baba chose Vrindavan as the place for his samadhi. He died on 10th September, 1973. A temple was later built for him at the ashram, and his statue was consecrated on 15th June, 1976.
Why Hanuman Ansh matters
The unusual success of Hanuman Ansh has given a fresh spotlight to a spiritual figure whose influence has continued for decades.
The film’s journey also shows how a small production without a conventional Bollywood star or a massive marketing budget can find an audience when viewers connect with its subject and story. From a ₹2-crore production to more than ₹100 crore at the Indian box office, Hanuman Ansh has become an unlikely theatrical success.
At the centre of that success is the life of Neem Karoli Baba, a spiritual figure whose teachings, temples and legacy continue to draw followers in India and abroad.
On the 6th of September 2026, a five-storey building used as a boys’ PG collapsed in Delhi’s Satya Niketan area, leaving seven dead and dozens injured. The Delhi Police promptly initiated the rescue operation and arrested the building’s owner. While the country is still deeply anguished over the loss of lives, the tragedy is being inhumanly exploited for political and ideological attacks on the BJP government. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the anti-cabal claimed that the government installed jammers at the collapse site.
AAP and anti-BJP cabal claim Delhi government installed jammers before launching rescue operation at Satya Niketan building collapse site
On 8th September 2026, AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj shared video in which a YouTuber claimed that the government was doing a ‘cover-up’ of the Satya Niketan building collapse incident, by installing barricades and jammers and deploying forces.
Sharing the video, Bhardwaj wrote, “YouTube Media & Social Media is the only hope. Godi Media is a partner in crime at places like Satya Niketan. Heavy police/ paramilitary is deployed with guns to prevent social media from reporting the truth. Jammers were the first thing to be placed at building site. I think, much before Govt Ambulances, they brought jammers.”
YouTube Media & Social Media is the only hope. Godi Media is a partner in crime at places like Satya Niketan.
Heavy police/ paramilitary is deployed with guns to prevent social media from reporting truth.
Several social media users have also amplified this claim that before initiating the rescue operation, the authorities installed jammers at the collapse site while several people were stuck under debris.
In this vein, one X user posted, “PR of sanghi government is so important that they’ve installed network jammers when students stuck under debris were trying to contact their family for help.”
Another one wrote, “They f*cking put mobile jammers at the crash site in Delhi. The children were sending videos to get rescued, people were calling Blinkit ambulances…and they put jammers!!! We are living in an extended Black Mirror episode in this country! dystopian present continuous!”
Similar narrative is being pushed on Instagram, wherein some creators claimed that the BJP government in Delhi deliberately installed jammers at the collapse site for PR, while people stuck under debris were trying to call ambulance.
“PR is so important for this government that they installed network jammers when students, stuck under debris were trying to contact their family for help,” one Instagram influencer Anuvind Kanwal posted.
This same claim has been amplified across various Instagram Reels.
One X user, Tanmoy, wrote, “This Government’s Only Weapon is Shutting Down The Internet. What a Shameful Act by the Delhi Government — They Installed Jammers in the Satya Niketan Disaster Area and Arranged things so that the Ground Reality would not get out. How Much Information Will They Block From The Rest Of The Country This Way? How Many Bodies Will They Be Able To Hide?”
This Government's Only Weapon is Shutting Down The Internet.
What a Shameful Act by the Delhi Government — They Installed Jammers in the Satya Niketan Disaster Area and Arranged things so that the Ground Reality would not get out.
The main source of this blatant misinformation is an Instagram page, The Unedited Media, which first floated the claims that jammers were activated at rescue site to prevent communications and somehow faclitate a cover up.
Delhi Police refutes ‘jammers at Satya Niketan rescue site’ claim
Contrary to the false narrative being peddled online, the Delhi Police had officially confirmed that no jammers were activated at the Satya Niketan rescue site. The police said that internet connectivity was uninterrupted before, during and after the rescue operation.
It further stated that the NDRF and Fire tender teams coordinated during the rescue operation via mobile phones. The Police also highlighted the fact that locals and media continue to broadcast on-site visuals without any internet connectivity issues.
The police also urged people to avoid engagement-farming-driven propagation of misinformation.
“FACT CHECK: Rumours of mobile jammers at the Satya Niketan rescue site are completely FALSE. Networks are fully operational. Delhi Police, NDRF, & Fire teams are coordinating seamlessly via mobile. Media and citizens are broadcasting live from the site with no disruption. Do not spread engagement-driven misinformation. Rely on verified official updates only.
People trapped under debris called ambulances and contacted family members: Communications from the site worked uninterrupted
Several survivors of the Satya Niketan building collapse incident confirmed that while they were stuck, they called Blinkit ambulances, sent SOS videos and messages to police and their loved ones.
One of the survivors, Aditya, a BCom first-year student, called his sister at around 2 pm, shortly after the 1:30 pm collapse. Aditya informed his sister that he was trapped and his phone’s battery was dying. He also recorded and sent an 11-second SOS video from under the debris showing his dust- and blood-covered face.
Another survivor, Neeraj Bawa, dialled one of his friends from the rubble, that help guide the rescuers.
Locals also confirmed using the Blinkit app to order oxygen cylinders and ambulances. Blinkit staff said that the first app-based emergency call came around 1:40 pm and their ambulance reached the site by around 1:50 pm. The app-based ordering and video calls require a working mobile network.
Meanwhile, the Delhi Police and NDRF teams had also swung into action and initiated a rescue operation, and there were no reports of any deliberate internet connectivity disruptions or installation of jammers for any PR gimmick by the government.
The collapsed building, known as Hostel Daze, was being used as a boys’ PG and housed several Delhi University students. It was located near Delhi University’s South Campus and opposite Sri Venkateswara College.
Police said repair and renovation work was being carried out on the ground floor when the building collapsed at around 1:30 pm on Sunday. According to the latest update from AIIMS Trauma Centre, 10 patients were brought to the hospital, of whom six were declared dead on arrival, and one later died from injuries.
The Delhi Police has arrested the owner of the five-storey boys’ paying guest (PG) accommodation that collapsed in Delhi’s Satya Niketan area on Sunday, 6th September. He has been identified as Hariram Bansal and was picked up from Bhiwadi in Rajasthan, near the Haryana border on Monday, 7th September.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has also suspended five officials from its South Zone with immediate effect. The action came as rescue teams continued their search operation at the site for the second straight day on Monday.
The Eiffel Tower in Paris was closed on Monday, 7th September, after staff members went on strike, following allegations that female employees were asked to stay away from certain areas during a private visit by a Hindu religious group. The dispute stems from a visit last week by a delegation of around 100 people linked to BAPS (Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha). The group was in France for events connected to the inauguration of a major Hindu temple near Paris.
Eiffel Tower employees criticised the instructions they said were given during the visit, alleging that female workers were sidelined because of their gender. In a statement, staff members condemned “professional instructions that led to female employees being sidelined, replaced, and rendered invisible based on their gender.”
The employees said they were shocked by the situation. “Instructions were given to female employees of the Eiffel Tower and to female employees of contractors to make themselves invisible to welcome this delegation,” they said.
Eiffel Tower operator admits visit conditions were wrong
SETE, the company that operates the Eiffel Tower, acknowledged that the Hindu delegation had requested arrangements that would limit “interactions with women” during the visit.
However, the company said it should never have accepted such conditions. SETE said the arrangements were “not in line with SETE’s values, nor with the principles of equality between men and women” and said it would accept the consequences of what happened.
SETE president Ariel Weil also condemned the incident. “It is clearly not an acceptable practice. I restate the Eiffel Tower’s commitment to republican values and to the equality of men and women,” Weil told AFP.
BAPS policy for its Swamis
The reported request also needs to be viewed in the context of BAPS’s own religious rules for its sadhus. On its website, BAPS explains that celibacy, or nishkam dharma, is the most important of the five vows prescribed by Bhagwan Swaminarayan to his sadhu disciples. It says the vow means that “a Swaminarayan sadhu could never talk, touch or associate with women.”
BAPS also describes this as a personal spiritual discipline rather than a rejection of women, and says its sadhus are taught to respect women. Its published material provides examples of sadhus avoiding situations in which their religious vows could not be maintained.
That religious practice, however, does not necessarily justify shifting the burden of those restrictions onto employees at a public workplace. If a visiting delegation requires its religious representatives to avoid interacting with women, the more appropriate solution would be to organise the visit so that those representatives can follow their vows without asking female employees to leave their posts or avoid particular areas.
The Eiffel Tower is the workplace of its staff, and asking women to step aside or making them effectively invisible because of their gender raises a separate issue of workplace equality. The concern, therefore, is not about mocking or attacking a religious practice, but about whether that practice was allowed to dictate how local employees could perform their jobs.
BAPS responds to allegations
BAPS, which consecrated its first major temple in France near Paris on Sunday, 6th September, responded after the staff protest. The organisation said it respected the concerns raised by the Eiffel Tower employees and was taking them seriously.
BAPS said the visit had been planned in coordination with Eiffel Tower staff because of the size of its delegation and was scheduled at the beginning of normal opening hours to reduce disruption to other visitors.
Nous comprenons les préoccupations exprimées et les prenons très au sérieux.
Compte tenu de la taille de notre délégation, la visite a été organisée en coordination avec les équipes de la tour Eiffel, au début des horaires habituels d’ouverture, afin de limiter autant que… pic.twitter.com/gyiwzmh6Jv
— BAPS Mandir Swaminarayan Hindou de Paris (@BAPSParis) September 7, 2026
“To our knowledge, at no time was access to the Eiffel Tower denied to anyone,” the organisation said.
It added, “Nevertheless, we wish to offer our sincere apologies to anyone who may have been hurt or inconvenienced by this situation. We are deeply committed to the universal values of mutual respect and service to others.”
French leaders demand investigation
The incident has also triggered a strong political reaction in France. Paris Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire said an investigation would be launched “as soon as possible” and said he understood the anger among Eiffel Tower employees.
Je prends connaissance du mouvement de colère des salarié·es de la tour Eiffel et je veux leur dire que leur mécontentement est légitime.
Il n’est pas acceptable que de telles conditions puissent être tolérées. Ce ne sont ni mes valeurs, ni celles que doit porter la tour Eiffel,… https://t.co/3srttJpxPo
“All light must be shed on the facts that led to this protest,” Gregoire wrote on X.
French Equality Minister Aurore Berge also criticised the reported instructions, saying, “In France, we do not ask women to erase themselves. No dogma, no religion is above the laws of the Republic.”
The incident has therefore raised a difficult but important question: religious groups should be free to follow their own beliefs, but when those beliefs are being accommodated in a public workplace, that accommodation should not come at the cost of treating employees differently because they are women.
When laws encourage lawlessness and are turned into a means of destroying innocent lives and financial greed, they deserve serious scrutiny. In recent years, a debate has been going on over the gross misuse of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act or the SC/ST Act of 1989. From ordinary citizens to the courts, concerns have been raised about fake SC/ST Act cases used to falsely implicate individuals belonging to the general and OBC categories for vengeance and to obtain financial compensation, diluting the law’s credibility.
The SC/ST Act was claimed to have been enacted to provide stronger protection against caste-based violence and discrimination. The law lists various offences relating to various patterns or behaviours inflicting criminal offences and breaking the self-respect and esteem of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes community, which includes denial of economic, democratic, and social rights, discrimination, exploitation, and abuse of the legal process.
Under Section 18 of this Act, provision for anticipatory bail is not available to the offenders. Any public servant who deliberately neglects his duties under this Act is liable to punishment with imprisonment for up to 6 months. An amendment was added to the original Act in 2015 to make the Act more stringent by adding more instances of “atrocities” as crimes against SCs and STs.
However, over the years, a pattern of the weaponisation and misuse of the SC/ST Act has emerged. Those eligible to invoke the SC/ST Act are misusing the law in cases of personal disputes, property matters, or for financial compensation.
When the Supreme Court acknowledged the possibility of the misuse of the SC/ST Act
A major Supreme Court observation in this regard came in the 2018 Dr Subhash Kashinath Mahajan v. State of Maharashtra case, in which the court noted the possibility of the SC/ST Act being used for “extraneous considerations”.
The Supreme Court had ruled that additional safeguards must be provided to civil servants before arresting them under the SC/ST Act. The Court stated that the approval of an appointing authority or an S.S.P is required before arresting a public servant accused under the Act.
Those opposed to any scrutiny of the SC/ST Act also mentioned that to avoid false implications, a preliminary enquiry by the DSP must be conducted to find out whether the charges are correct and not frivolous.
The Central government had moved a review petition before the Supreme Court for this ruling. However, the court rejected the petition, stating that its judgment is not in conflict with the SC/ST Act and does not dilute it in any way. Rather, the ruling only flagged the issue: “Can the liberty of an innocent be taken away without application of mind? We only said protect an innocent from being falsely implicated under the Act, which has stringent provisions. People agitating may not have read the judgment. They may have been misled.”
Following the original court ruling, widespread violence erupted across several states after Dalit groups called for a Bharat Bandh.
Months later, in August 2018, the Modi government passed the bill to reverse the Supreme Court’s order. Later, in October 2019, the Supreme Court restored the original provisions of the SC/ST Act, stating that the previous order had strayed into the legislative domain.
The NCRB conundrum
The vote bank politics and street veto prevented the SC/ST Act from undergoing the much-needed reforms. As the SC/ST Act achieved a reservation-like sacrosanctity, there has been a dramatic surge in the filing of SC/ST Act cases, as per the National Crime Records Bureau of India (NCRB) data.
The NCRB’s “Crime in India” reports show FIRs registered under the SC/ST Act or related BNS sections when the Act is invoked. The NCRB data does not, at the point of registration, distinguish between incidents that courts later treat as genuine caste-motivated atrocities and those arising from ordinary quarrels devoid of any caste angle, land disputes, or other vengeful motives.
The subsequent police disposal tables, however, do classify outcomes, some as “final report false”, “mistake of fact or of law”, or “true but insufficient evidence”.
However, treating every crime registered against SC/ST individuals as ‘atrocity’ is wrong and misleading, since the data does not specifically distinguish between which FIRs reflect genuine caste-based crimes and which reflect agenda-driven fake cases.
Simply put, the NCRB data reflects any case registered under the SC/ST Act, rather than independently verifying or filtering whether each case involved a proven, direct caste-based motivation. The NCRB simply records or compiles the data it receives from various state and UT police departments. It does not audit or probe or in any way re-evaluate the foundational intent of an FIR before publishing numbers.
As per a written reply in Parliament by the Minister of State for Social Justice & Empowerment, Ramdas Athawale, cases registered under the SC/ST Act stood at 45,995 in 2020, of which 36,178 were chargesheeted, 17,113 remained under investigation at the year-end, and 2,613 ended in conviction. Similarly, a total of 61,925 persons were arrested that year, 75,238 were chargesheeted, and 4,855 were convicted, while 177,379 cases remained pending trial at year-end.
Meanwhile, in 2021, cases filed under the SC/ST Act stood at around 45,800 to 46,100, with 37,123 chargesheeted and about 16,300 to 16,400 pending investigation. The convictions increased to 2,848, with arrests totalling roughly 58,700 to 58,800, and around 74,000 to 74,100 persons were chargesheeted. The pending trials surged further to around 2,05,800 to 2,06,000, and 5,141 persons were convicted.
Source: PIB
In 2022, SC/ST Act case registrations increased dramatically to 52,866 cases, with roughly 42,000 to 42,900 chargesheeted and about 17,000 to 17,200 cases pending investigation. The convictions doubled from the previous year to 4,876. The arrests numbered around 65,000 to 65,150, persons chargesheeted numbered between 84,074 and 84,145, and persons convicted rose sharply to roughly 9,070 to 9,080. The cases pending trial rose to between 233,500 and 233,750.
The year 2023 witnessed a five-year high with registration of 53,372 SC/ST Act cases, of which 45,439 were chargesheeted, 14,634 were pending investigation, and convictions stood at 4,691. Total arrests stood at 61,747. In 2024, cases came down to 48, 669, though convictions rose to 5,192.
Between 2018 and 2022, conviction and charge-sheeting rates have remained low despite a rise in case numbers, with conviction rates falling from 39-40% in 2020 to 32-33% in 2022. In addition, 60% of cases registered under the SC/ST Act ended in acquittal or discharge.
Between the years 2019 and 2023, while total reported atrocities against Scheduled Castes surged to a five-year peak of 53,372 cases in 2023, around 14% to 15% of all disposed cases annually were essentially concluded without reaching trial under these final closure report grounds.
In 2020, the Rajasthan Police declared that more than 40% of cases filed under the SC/ST Act were fake.
The majority-acquittal outcome across the board indicates that a significant share of cases registered under the SC/ST Act were never caste-based atrocities to begin with.
While in some cases it may be true that there was a shoddy investigation or perhaps a cover-up to save the perpetrators, or witnesses turn hostile after out-of-court ‘settlement’, the consistently low conviction rates and high final report closures indicate a systemic misuse and weaponisation of a law meant for protection from caste-based atrocities, for caste-based vengeance and financial gains.
Major cases wherein the court found blatant misuse of the SC/ST Act provisions
In the wake of the rampant weaponisation of the SC/ST Act, people belonging to the general and the OBC category have begun fearing any legitimate public criticism of topics ‘sensitive’ to the SC or ST community, be it caste-based reservations, reforms in reservations, Dr BR Ambedkar or the blatant Hinduphobia displayed by a section of ‘Ambedkarites’.
There have also been incidents wherein individuals were threatened with fake SC/ST Act cases out of sheer hatred for the general category individuals, for coercing others into favourable land dispute settlements or for compensation.
In 2020, people in a village in the Firozabad district in Uttar Pradesh fled the village due to fake cases registered against them under the SC/ST Act. Reports said that residents of Gothua village had sold their homes and moved to other places due to harassment from fake cases. Villagers have written on the outside walls and doors of their houses that they will be sold.
BJP leader who was killed over a petty dispute was falsely implicated under the SC/ST Act
In March 2021, Dhirendra Bahadur Singh, a 52-year-old booth president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, was found brutally killed in Pithapur Malak village in the Pratapgarh district in Uttar Pradesh. It was alleged that the murder was a fallout of a dispute between two parties over sugarcane. Singh had intervened in the dispute between two people over cutting sugarcane from a field without permission.
While the issue seemed to have been resolved, Dhirendra was later beaten to death by two brothers, Ranjeet and Vipin Saroj, of the nearby Hatsara Mangapur village after he tried to intervene in their fight. Dhirendra Singh’s killers have previously tried to implicate Singh in a false SC/ST case. It was reported that locals alleged that the accused often misused the Act to threaten the people of the village.
Woman abused and molested, threatened with fake case under the Act when she resisted
In late March 2021, Narendra Kumar Nirmal, a teacher belonging to the SC/ST community, was accused of threatening a woman with a fake case under the Act if she resisted molestation. The incident happened in Samaspur Salwara village, falling under the Manikpur police station area of Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh.
Maratha girl falsely booked under the SC/ST Act for opposing the vandalism of a Hindu temple
In March 2021, it was reported from Maharashtra that a young Maratha girl was molested, brutally beaten up and booked under the SC/ST Act for opposing the vandalism of a Hindu temple. A mob of 15-20 people had reportedly attacked her genitals and other sensitive body parts with stones.
The victim’s family had alleged that some Dalit locals in the village tried to demolish their Hindu temple, in a bid to build an Ambedkarite temple. The victim had resisted these attempts. The Maratha girl was beaten, flogged, her genitals were mutilated, and she was also booked under the SC/ST Act.
Brahmin man Vishnu Tiwari wrongfully imprisoned for 20 years on false charges of rape and SC/ST Act
In February 2021, a Brahmin man named Vishnu Tiwari was set free by the Allahabad High Court after he spent 20 years in jail on false charges of rape and the SC/ST Act.
Tiwari, a resident of Lalitpur village, was booked on charges of rape, sexual exploitation, and criminal intimidation under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and other sections of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, when a woman from Silawan village, which is 30 km away from his place, accused him of raping her. He was held guilty by a trial court and sentenced to life imprisonment at the age of 23 in the year 2000. In the 20 years he spent in jail, Tiwari lost all his family members.
The Court’s acquittal was based on the medical examination report, which said that no sperm or injuries were found on the prosecutrix, who was five months pregnant at the time. Her testimony also indicated that she was not a ‘stellar witness’.
Professional disagreement, workplace grievances can’t be automatically charged under SC ST Act, unless specific casteist abuse in public: Calcutta HC
In February 2026, the Calcutta High Court stated in an order that all kinds of professional disagreements, administrative disputes or instances of facing workplace humiliation cannot automatically attract offences under the SC ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, unless there is clear caste-based insult or abuse in public view.
The HC quashed proceedings against a Sanskrit professor under the SC ST Act, saying that though the complainant belongs to the SC community, the incident of altercation and insult cannot be called a caste-based atrocity and does not come under Section 3 (1)(r) of the Act.
The professor has a PhD in Sanskrit and had served as Head of the Department of Sanskrit at Sanskrit College & University. She was accused by an assistant professor of the same university, who belongs to the SC community, of professional jealousy and harassment.
The complainant had alleged that the accused had excluded him from departmental decisions, stopped his classes, obstructed him from performing his departmental duties and insulted him during an online meeting using objectionable language. He had alleged that the HOD’s behaviour was motivated by his caste identity. The court, however, found no substance in this claim, and thus set aside the charges under SC -ST Act.
A woman filed three SC/ST cases for vengeance against Mumbai professor for questioning reservation eligibility
In March 2026, the Bombay High Court quashed a 16-year-old case against advocate and law professor Virendranath B. Tiwari, who was booked under the provisions of the SC/ST Act. The complainant named Chitra Shalunkhe had three cases against Tiwari.
In all three cases, the complainant invoked provisions of the SC/ST Act, each stemming from broadly similar allegations. In the earlier two instances, Tiwari had already been acquitted or discharged. Yet, an FIR was registered once again, this time over a 2007 incident where Shalunkhe alleged that Tiwari questioned her academic qualifications and credentials for a reserved post and assaulted her.
The court, however, found no caste-based offence, and Justice Bhobe noted that initiating proceedings “for the third time” on similar grounds appeared to be “an act of vengeance aimed at causing harassment and humiliation” to the accused, a 74-year-old senior citizen.
Woman misused SC/ST Act and filed fake rape case against ex-boyfriend
In November 2025, an SC/ST Special Court sentenced a woman named Rinki to three and a half years of imprisonment, along with a fine of Rs 30,000. The court mandated that any assistance she obtained from the state government must be returned. This came after the convict lodged a false rape and SC/ST case against her former boyfriend as an act of revenge. Special Judge Vivekananda Sharan Tripathi pronounced the verdict.
A family in Aligarh extorted Rs 46 lakhs by misusing the SC-ST Act and had filed 15 fake cases in 10 years for compensation
In a classic case of how the SC/ST Act is misused, a woman named Chandrawati Devi, a resident of Hastpur village, and her allegedly misused government schemes meant for Scheduled Castes (SC) and fraudulently pocketed around ₹46 lakh.
It was reported that in the last 10 years, 15 different cases have been registered against Chandrawati Devi and her family. Many of these cases were filed under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Under this law, victims are provided financial assistance and legal protection. The allegation is that Chandrawati and her family repeatedly filed false cases to avail the benefits of these schemes and have so far received nearly ₹46 lakh.
Allahabad University assistant professor lodged fake SC/ST Act cases against three senior colleagues
In February 2024, the Allahabad High Court quashed a 2016 FIR registered on the complaint of an Allahabad University assistant professor, and imposed a fine of ₹15 lakh on her.
The complainant was found to have falsely accused her colleagues of various offences, including voyeurism and criminal intimidation. She had also made allegations of offences under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
While quashing the FIR, Justice Prashant Kumar said, “This is a case where a Professor had to pay a very heavy price for asking an Assistant Professor to take classes and teach properly. He was made an accused in a frivolous and malicious criminal case and had to face trial for last eight years, and further had to face humiliation, stigma, for no fault of his own, and on the other hand, the complainant, by misusing the provisions of Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 (hereinafter referred as ‘the S.C./S.T. Act’), had been using as a weapon and threatened the other seniors from taking any action against her.”
Dalit woman falsely implicated general category lover in SC/ST Act case
In June 2025, a 22-year-old Dalit woman named Rinki filed a complaint at Mohanlalganj in Uttar Pradesh, alleging that a man named Deepak, from the general category, raped her on the pretext of marriage. Deepak, who was in a relationship with the complainant for five years, was then booked under the provisions of the SC/ST Act along with rape charges. Rinki filed a fake rape and caste atrocity case against Deepak after the latter married someone else.
Karnataka HC quashed it after it turned out that the SC/ST Act was weaponised in an employment dispute
In February 2026, the Karnataka High Court quashed a 2025 FIR involving individuals from the Bengaluru North University, over apparent procedural lapses and the absence of a prima facie atrocity. The court held that an employment dispute cannot be simply turned into a caste-atrocity case merely because the respondent belonged to a non-SC/ST category.
Even noted public figures do not shy away from threatening SC/ST Act cases against people not acting as per their whims
Not only common people, but even many public figures have no qualms about boasting that they would misuse the SC/ST Act if something does not happen as per their whims. In January this year, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) president and grandson of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Prakash Ambedkar, threatened to pursue legal action against Maharashtra’s Water Resources Minister and BJP leader Girish Mahajan for mere failure to mention Dr B.R. Ambedkar during his Republic Day address.
He alleged that not mentioning the name amounts to an atrocity crime under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and therefore, a case should be registered under the draconian law.
Political encouragement for weaponising the SC/ST Act
In April this year, Kerala Congress leader CP Mathew publicly urged women leaders of his party to file complaints to make cases stronger when confronting political opponents. He also mentioned that women could tear their own clothes and then go to the police, adding that this would help build stronger cases against rivals. Mathew also encouraged women from the SC and ST communities to invoke the SC/ST Act, saying that it would make the cases more serious from a legal point of view.
"ഒരു രാഷ്ട്രീയ സംഘർഷത്തിന് സാധ്യതയുണ്ടായാൽ വനിത പ്രവർത്തകർ സ്വയം ബ്ളൗസ് വലിച്ച് കീറണം" എന്നൊക്കെ പറയുന്നത് പബ്ലിക്കായി പ്രസംഗിക്കാൻ മാത്രം വല്യ ക്രെഡിറ്റ് ഉള്ള കാര്യമാണ് എന്നാണ് ഇടുക്കി ജില്ലാ കോൺഗ്രസ് കമ്മിറ്റി പ്രസിഡന്റ് സി പി മാത്യു ധരിച്ച് വെച്ചിരിക്കുന്നത്…. 🤷🏽♂️
The game of compensation: what the law says and how compensation is the fundamental reason why fake SC/ST cases are filed
Beyond vengeance, there is a lesser-talked-about reason for the significant surge in filing of fake SC/ST Act cases: compensation. Under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Rules, 1995, as amended in 2016, complainants are entitled to monetary relief at multiple stages. This monetary relief is disbursed immediately on FIR registration, as interim relief during trial, and as final compensation on conviction.
Roughly, 25% to 50% of the amount is released by the District Collector within seven days of the FIR’s filing, another 25% after the chargesheet is filed, and the balance on conviction, drawn from a schedule that ranges between ₹1 lakh for offences like caste slurs up to ₹8.25 lakh for murder or gang rape.
It is crucial to note that this financial relief is linked to registration and charge-sheeting; these stages occur well before any court has even tested the allegation, and not conviction alone.
Since a substantial portion of the compensation is required to be disbursed upon the registration of an FIR, this framework ends up incentivising the filing of frivolous SC/ST Act cases for compensation money. While recovery of the amount after a case turns out to be false or ends in acquittal, it is not automatic and is, in most cases, incomplete.
What is even more alarming is that there are well-oiled broker networks actively involved in the systematic filing of cases under the SC/ST Act by falsely implicating upper-caste individuals to obtain compensation.
In August 2025, a Special SC/ST Court in Lucknow sentenced a lawyer to life imprisonment after he was convicted of filing false rape cases under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The advocate, named Parmanand Gupta, used a Dalit woman working under his wife to file a large number of fake rape cases against various men. The scam was exposed after the Dalit woman revealed everything after becoming an approver in a case.
Pooja Rawat had filed 12 such cases through advocate Parmanand Gupta, in which she levelled serious allegations, including rape, against the accused persons, and invoked the SC/ST Act. During the trial of one of the cases, it was revealed that she was not even present at the alleged crime scene and had never even met the accused persons. Apart from this, Parmanand Gupta himself filed around 18 cases against various persons.
Courts raise alarm over misuse of SC/ST Act for compensation
Recently, the Allahabad High Court bench of Justice Santosh Rai directed the Uttar Pradesh Government to initiate an inquiry into the process through which benefits under the SC/ST Act and the Rules framed thereunder are claimed and disbursed. The court directed particular scrutiny into the cases involving repeated claims by the same complainants or family members.
The direction was issued to the UP government when the court heard the case of one Santosh Kumar Dohrey, an advocate by profession, and his family members received roughly ₹23,36,250 in financial relief or compensation across various criminal cases under the 1995 Rules.
The court also noted that around 10 to 12 further cases involving claims for relief by the same advocate and his family were currently pending before the concerned District Level Committee. The court stressed that the SC/ST Act relief scheme’s integrity must be “zealously safeguarded”.
In November 2024, the Allahabad High Court had raised concerns over the misuse of the SC/ST Act and relief scheme to obtain compensation for a caste atrocity that was never committed.
The court stressed the need for a thorough verification before registering the FIR under the SC/ST Act to assess the credibility of the allegations and protect people from being falsely implicated under the stringent law.
The court said this after a complainant admitted before the court that he had filed a false FIR under the pressure of the villagers. The complainant had received over ₹75,000 from the state as compensation. The court directed that the amount be given to the accused.
Madhya Pradesh High Court judge raises concern over misuse of SC/ST Act, says brokers get involved in such cases for compensation
In January 2025, Madhya Pradesh High Court judge Vivek Agarwal raised alarms over the rampant misuse of the SC/ST Act. He also expressed concern over the misuse of laws related to crimes against women.
Addressing a division-bench workshop, Justice Agarwal said, “If we have the right, we also have the duty to ensure that an innocent person is not wrongfully punished. It is imperative to filter out inconsistencies and bring out the truth.”
The High Court judge also warned the public prosecution and police administration about the provision of compensation in the SC/ST Act. He said that as soon as such cases come to light, many middlemen also become active and trap innocent people in the name of getting compensation for the complainant. The judge also highlighted how middlemen or brokers exploit the legal system by filing bogus cases under the SC/ST Act to procure compensation for the victims and then claim a share in the payout.
“Many times people are falsely implicated in SC/ST cases. Investigating officers should take care that in such cases innocent people are not implicated and the guilty should not escape. In this case, the administration, police and judiciary are lacking somewhere. Therefore, during the investigation, we should keep in mind that our credibility is not being damaged because of the middlemen. If we have the right, we also have the duty to ensure that an innocent person is not wrongfully punished. It is imperative to filter out inconsistencies and bring out the truth,” Justice Agarwal said.
Centre proposes 40% compensation hike even as cases of SC/ST Act misuse increase
While alarms have been raised about the growing alleged misuse of the SC/ST Act for compensation, the Modi Government proposed a 40% increase in compensation for SC/ST victims of atrocities, based on the rise in the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
The minimum compensation is expected to rise to ₹1 lakh and the maximum to about ₹12 lakh, according to those privy to the development. The proposal has been sent to the Expenditure Finance Committee for approval.
While those who file false cases obtain their vengeance or financial compensation, those falsely implicated in SC/ST Act cases lose their reputation, their precious years of life, their dignity, and they and their family suffer due to a lifelong stigma of imprisonment, making it impossible for them to start afresh with the same confidence, respect and dignity they had before such cases. This blatant abuse of the system for money must not be allowed to persist and thrive. This fake caste atrocity-based extortion and fraud must be stopped.
On Pakistan Air Force Day, the PAF released a heavily graphics-driven video portraying an alternate version of the May 2025 conflict with India. Titled Fizaon K Pasbaan, the video claims that Pakistan struck as many as 32 Indian Air Force bases, destroyed two S-400 air-defence systems and shot down multiple Indian aircraft.
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Pakistan’s entire video for ‘Op Chaddi Banyan Marsoos’ or whatever is made with AI.
There is, however, a glaring problem with this grand military victory presented on screen: the video offers virtually no real footage of the destruction it claims to have caused.
Instead, viewers are treated to computer-generated explosions, animated maps, digitally rendered aircraft and fictionalised strike sequences.
For a country that has spent more than a year claiming spectacular military victories over India, the PAF’s latest production is a remarkably convenient substitute for evidence.
Pakistan has been making these claims since Operation Sindoor
The pattern is not new.
Ever since India launched Operation Sindoor in May 2025, Pakistan’s military establishment and its information ecosystem have repeatedly circulated claims of having inflicted devastating damage on Indian military assets and aircraft.
Indian aircraft were supposedly shot down in large numbers. Indian airbases were supposedly destroyed. S-400 systems were supposedly eliminated. Indian military infrastructure was supposedly crippled.
The latest PAF video simply collects many of those claims and packages them into a slick cinematic narrative.
The difference this time is that Pakistan has apparently decided that when photographs, satellite imagery and authentic strike footage are unavailable, AI-generated visuals can fill the gap.
The video boldly announces that 32 Indian air bases were hit and depicts strikes on major Indian military targets. It also claims the destruction of four Rafales, a Su-30MKI, a MiG-29, a Mirage-2000 and a Heron UAV.
But where are the photographs?
Where are the satellite images?
Where is the identifiable runway damage?
Where are the destroyed hangars?
Where is the wreckage?
The PAF video provides none of the visual evidence one would ordinarily expect to accompany claims on this scale. Instead, it simply animates the alleged destruction.
The S-400 claim gets an AI makeover
Perhaps the most revealing example is the alleged destruction of India’s S-400 systems.
Pakistan had already claimed during the conflict that it had destroyed an Indian S-400 air defence system. India rejected the claim, which became part of Islamabad’s broader information campaign surrounding Operation Sindoor. The claim was further undermined when PM Modi visited Adampur Air Base, where the S-400 system that Pakistan had claimed to have destroyed was visibly deployed.
Now, more than a year later, the PAF has brought the same narrative back, only this time with an animated strike sequence.
The message seems to be: if the original claim could not be backed up with convincing evidence, perhaps it can be made more believable with better graphics.
That is not military evidence.
That is propaganda with a production budget.
From destroyed airbases to a destroyed India
The PAF video goes far beyond aircraft and air-defence systems.
Its graphics claim that Pakistan struck 32 Indian Air Force bases and disrupted India’s national power grid and fuel supply chain. It also depicts attacks on major Indian targets, including Parliament and INS Vikrant.
The scale of the claims is extraordinary.
The evidence presented for them is not.
A computer-generated missile striking an Indian target is not footage of that target being struck. An animated aircraft exploding is not proof of a shoot-down. A digital depiction of an S-400 being destroyed is not satellite imagery of an S-400 being destroyed.
Animation can illustrate a claim. It cannot authenticate one.
Pakistan has no evidence to back its claim. Which is why it had to rely on AI to create a video. India, on the other hand, had nothing to hide and had evidence in the public domain, with pictures available on the internet of the extent of damage Pakistan faced during Operation Sindoor.
The contrast with Operation Sindoor documentary could not be sharper
And this is where the timing of the PAF video becomes particularly interesting.
India’s Declassified: Operation Sindoor, released by Discovery and discovery+ on August 15, sought to document the 88-hour military operation through the testimony of India’s senior military and security leadership and actual operational material.
The documentary put India’s military triumph on screen through real footage and imagery of the operation and the destruction inflicted on Pakistani military infrastructure.
Pakistan’s answer is now a graphics-heavy production showing the destruction of India.
The contrast could hardly be more stark:
India: Here is the footage.
Pakistan: Here is the animation.
The PAF’s production therefore appears less like a documentary rebuttal and more like an attempt to create a visual counter-narrative after India’s documentary put the military operation back in the spotlight.
Pakistan’s problem: the claims keep getting bigger
The most striking feature of Pakistan’s propaganda campaign since Operation Sindoor has been the sheer scale of its alleged victories.
First came claims of Indian aircraft being shot down.
Then came claims of Indian airbases being destroyed.
Then came claims involving S-400 systems.
Now the PAF’s official video presents a sweeping catalogue of supposed Pakistani successes: dozens of Indian bases hit, advanced air-defence systems destroyed, multiple aircraft eliminated and critical Indian infrastructure disrupted.
With every retelling, the Pakistani version of the war becomes more spectacular.
But spectacular claims require spectacular evidence.
And instead of releasing photographs, satellite imagery or authenticated combat footage showing the alleged destruction, the PAF has released an animated reconstruction of it.
That tells its own story.
When reality is inconvenient, create it digitally
The irony is difficult to miss.
Pakistan is not merely disputing India’s account of Operation Sindoor. It is attempting to construct an entirely different visual memory of the conflict.
The latest PAF video gives Pakistan the perfect battlefield: one where every Indian target can be shown exploding, every Pakistani strike can be depicted as successful, and every military claim can be presented without having to confront the inconvenient question of evidence.
The explosions are real only inside the animation.
The destruction exists on the screen.
And the proof remains conspicuously absent.
More than a year after Operation Sindoor, Pakistan’s military establishment is still trying to sell the same narrative, only now with AI and computer-generated graphics doing the work that photographs and battlefield evidence were supposed to do.
If Pakistan really has the evidence to support its claims of destroying Indian military targets, it should release the evidence.
Until then, the PAF’s latest production looks less like a response to Declassified: Operation Sindoor and more like an attempt to manufacture, through animation, the victory that Pakistan has been claiming since May 2025 to continue to mislead its population.
