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PM Modi inaugurates India’s first Greenfield integrated refinery-cum-petrochemical complex in Rajasthan: Read how this project is a major milestone for India’s energy security 

Shriti Sagar
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PM Modi inaugurates India’s first Greenfield integrated refinery-cum-petrochemical complex in Rajasthan: Read how this project is a major milestone for India’s energy security 

On Saturday, 4th July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally inaugurated the integrated refinery-cum-petrochemical complex at Rajasthan’s Pachpadra after touring the sprawling complex. Along with the refinery, he also inaugurated and laid the foundation stone for several other development projects related to urban transport, railways, highways, renewable energy and power transmission. 

He dedicated the country’s first greenfield integrated refinery-cum-petrochemical complex to the nation at Pachpadra in Rajasthan’s Balotra district, marking a major milestone for India’s energy sector and industrial development. The massive refinery project, which has been under development for several years, is expected to transform the economy of western Rajasthan and emerge as one of the country’s largest integrated refinery-cum-petrochemical complexes.

These projects are aimed at strengthening Rajasthan’s infrastructure while boosting industrial growth and employment opportunities in the region.

PM Modi says India overcame the biggest energy crisis of the 21st century 

Addressing a public gathering after the inauguration, Prime Minister Modi said India had successfully overcome what he described as the biggest energy crisis of the 21st century, triggered by the conflict in West Asia. He credited the country’s success to timely decision-making, strategic planning and India’s growing diplomatic influence.

“The willpower and efforts of the new India of the 21st century have overcome the biggest energy crisis of the 21st century,” the Prime Minister said.

He explained that while many countries struggled with fuel shortages and rising energy prices during the conflict in West Asia, India managed to protect its citizens by taking the right decisions at the right time.

“We assessed the crisis in time, prepared an effective strategy, made balanced use of our national resources and used the strength of our diplomacy to overcome this challenge,” he said.

Taking a swipe at the opposition, PM Modi said that while “some forces” were busy spreading rumours and creating panic during the crisis, his government was working continuously to ensure that the country’s energy needs were met without disruption.

“The work done during that difficult period, the patience shown and the sensitive policy and diplomatic decisions taken by our government will be remembered in history,” he added.

Diplomacy helped India maintain fuel supplies 

The Prime Minister highlighted India’s dependence on imported energy, particularly Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), saying that the country imports nearly 60% of its LPG requirements. He pointed out that the temporary closure of the Strait of Hormuz during the West Asia conflict had created the possibility of a major energy crisis across the world.

However, he said India’s diplomatic efforts helped the country avoid serious disruptions.

“Our diplomatic relations with foreign countries helped us overcome the crisis. During the war, Indian diplomacy displayed its strength,” PM Modi said.

He added that India managed to source fuel from nearly 40 countries despite disruptions in global supply chains.

The Prime Minister also said domestic LPG supplies remained uninterrupted throughout the crisis. Referring to recent government measures, he noted that commercial LPG cylinder prices had been reduced significantly, providing relief to businesses. According to him, the government managed the LPG crisis within just seven days.

PM Modi further revealed that public sector oil marketing companies suffered losses of more than ₹75,000 crore during the global energy crisis. Instead of passing the burden on to consumers, the government absorbed the losses to protect people from the sharp rise in international fuel prices.

Refinery strengthens India’s journey towards self-reliance

Linking the refinery with India’s vision of self-reliance, PM Modi said true national pride comes only when a country becomes self-dependent.

“Today, from this land, a big step has been taken towards self-reliance,” he said while describing the Rajasthan refinery as an important milestone in India’s journey towards energy security.

The Prime Minister also highlighted the government’s focus on completing projects instead of merely announcing them.

“You know me. The project whose foundation stone I laid is also inaugurated by me,” he remarked, drawing applause from the gathering.

He also inaugurated the new terminal building at Jodhpur Airport and said the modern facility had already become a major attraction on social media.

Targeting the previous Congress government in Rajasthan, PM Modi said that the refinery project had remained stalled for years before work accelerated after the BJP came to power in the state. He credited the progress to what he described as the “double-engine government.”

A long journey filled with political and technical challenges 

Although the refinery has now become a reality, its journey has been anything but easy.

The project was originally proposed in 2012 and has taken nearly 15 years to reach completion. During this period, it witnessed political controversies, land disputes, repeated delays and rising costs.

The inauguration itself had earlier been scheduled for 21st April this year. However, the event had to be postponed after a fire broke out on 20th April due to a leak in one of the refinery’s processing units.

The refinery was initially planned at Lilana village in Baytu. However, after reports of large-scale land purchases by influential individuals and land speculators, the Rajasthan government shifted the project to Pachpadra, where sufficient government land was available.

The decision sparked major political controversy at the time. Former Baytu MLA Colonel Sonaram Choudhary openly opposed shifting the refinery and accused the then state government of trying to benefit Jodhpur district. The issue even led to protests and political resignations.

One of India’s most advanced refineries

Today, the Pachpadra refinery stands as one of the country’s most technologically advanced refining facilities.

The refinery is a joint venture between Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL), which holds a 74% stake, and the Rajasthan government, which owns the remaining 26%. The complex integrates refining and petrochemical production, with a petrochemical capacity of 2.4 MMTPA.

After an additional investment of over ₹42,229 crore beyond the original estimated cost, the project has become one of India’s biggest industrial investments.

One of its biggest strengths is its Nelson Complexity Index (NCI) of nearly 17, making it one of the most sophisticated high-conversion refineries in the country. A higher NCI indicates that the refinery can process a wide variety of crude oil and convert even low-quality, heavy crude into high-value products such as petrol, diesel and petrochemicals.

The refinery has also become an example of the “Make in India” initiative. Most of its large reactors, processing columns and storage tanks have been manufactured within India. At the same time, advanced control systems and high-pressure compressors have been sourced using technologies from the United States, Japan and several European countries. International experts also contributed to maintaining world-class construction and welding standards.

Since the crude oil transported to the refinery has a wax-like nature, a specially designed heated pipeline has been constructed from Mundra in Gujarat to Pachpadra. Equipped with thermal insulation and heating stations, the pipeline ensures that the crude oil remains at the required temperature throughout transportation.

A major economic boost for Rajasthan

The refinery is expected to significantly change Rajasthan’s industrial landscape.

Until now, Rajasthan has primarily been known as a crude oil-producing state. With the commissioning of this integrated refinery-cum-petrochemical complex, the state will also begin producing value-added products such as polypropylene, polymers and other petrochemical products.

This is expected to attract large investments in downstream plastic, chemical and manufacturing industries, creating thousands of direct and indirect employment opportunities. The project is also likely to strengthen India’s energy security while reducing dependence on imported petroleum products and supporting the country’s broader goal of becoming more self-reliant in the energy sector.

The Guardian’s Hannah Ellis-Petersen suffers a meltdown after PM Modi receives the Seychelles highest honour: Read about the anti-India propagandist and her track record

Shriti Sagar
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The Guardian’s Hannah Ellis-Petersen suffers a meltdown after PM Modi receives the Seychelles highest honour: Read about the anti-India propagandist and her track record

On Friday, 3rd July, The Guardian published an article, written by Hannah Ellis Petersen, titled “‘Give him any award, and he’ll come running’: Narendra Modi racks up honours on overseas trips.” The anti-India British publication highlighted the Indian Prime Minister’s recent visit to Seychelles, where he was conferred with the archipelago’s highest honour.

According to the article, as Narendra Modi touched down in Seychelles over the weekend, the nation swiftly bestowed the “Guardian of the Blue Horizon” award upon him. The report described Modi as “beaming” while accepting the trophy and certificate from Seychelles President Patrick Herminie. However, the publication quickly shifted its focus to critics who claimed the award was marred by several discrepancies.

Screengrab of the report

The core of The Guardian’s critique rested on alleged formatting errors and the timing of the award’s creation. The piece highlighted that the presentation certificate misspelt “republic” as “repubblic” and “Seychelles” as “Seycheeles.” However, the article itself wrote that, on Thursday, 2nd July, the Seychelles foreign ministry responded with a statement claiming that a “working draft” had accidentally been circulated and that an “authentic and duly approved” version had now been issued.

“The Guardian of the Blue Horizon distinction is genuine,” added the foreign ministry.

It further alleged that the distinction had been created a mere three days before Modi’s arrival, making him the sole recipient. To amplify the controversy, the article noted that when the certificate was run through verification software, it was flagged as AI-generated.

The author argued that accolades have become a transactional expectation for Modi’s foreign trips, quoting biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, who claimed the global push for prizes is intended “to convey to supporters and potential converts that Modi is being honoured across the world because of his greatness.”

A pattern of selective focus in Western Media 

This reporting aligns with a broader tendency observed in segments of the Western Media, which frequently adopt a highly critical stance toward India’s political leadership and domestic developments. Publications like The Guardian often dedicate significant editorial space to dissecting the optics of Indian governance, framing routine diplomatic exchanges or national policies through an adversarial lens. 

This intense scrutiny of Global South democracies stands in stark contrast to how these same outlets handle sensitive domestic crises within their own borders, often turning a blind eye to covering the major issues in their home countries. For instance, investigative reporting on deeply entrenched issues in the United Kingdom, such as the grooming gangs. An independent Rape Gang Inquiry Report has revealed that the Muslim rape gangs comprised 87% to 95% Pakistani Muslim men, who raped, exploited and groomed over 250,000 non-Muslim, mostly White girls. This perceived double standard leads to viewing such overseas coverage not as objective journalism, but as a habitual projection of anti-India sentiment designed to overshadow the country’s growing international stature.

The reality behind Seychelles’ National Honours system

Despite the narrative pushed by external critics, the creation of the ‘Guardian of the Blue Horizon’ distinction has nothing to do with Prime Minister Modi himself but is instead rooted in the internal political restructuring of Seychelles. The island nation enacted the National Awards Act in 2022 to establish a formal civilian honours system. Under that framework, the country introduced the Medal of the Republic, the Medal of Honour, and the Medal of Merit to recognise public service and environmental work. The first National Awards ceremony was eventually held in 2023 after the legislation came into force, recognising individuals from different walks of life for public service, environmental work, healthcare, culture, governance and acts of bravery.

Among the recipients were President Wavel Ramkalawan, who received the Medal of the Republic under the provisions of the Act, former President Sir James Mancham, Central Bank Governor Caroline Abel, environmentalist Antonio Constance, singer Joe Samy and several others who had made significant contributions to Seychelles.

At the time, President Ramkalawan had said the country had long recognised Seychellois honoured abroad but lacked a proper system to acknowledge its own citizens. The National Awards were therefore introduced to fill that gap and formally celebrate national achievements.

However, following a recent change in government, President Patrick Herminie’s Cabinet approved the National Awards (Repeal) Bill, 2026, which abolished the previous framework while preserving the validity of past honours. The repeal effectively dissolved the old National Awards Committee, paving the way for a fresh honours system under the current administration.

The available facts demonstrate that the ‘Guardian of the Blue Horizon’ distinction represents a fresh beginning for Seychelles’ renewed honours framework rather than a sudden invention designed to flatter a visiting leader. The Seychelles government clarified that the title formally recognises PM Modi’s global leadership in environmental conservation, climate resilience, and his support for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). 

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) reiterated that the distinction honours India’s commitment to sustainable development and the blue economy. Upon receiving the award, PM Modi dedicated the recognition to global environmental cooperation, stating: “I humbly accept this honour and dedicate it to all those countries that are fighting the challenge of climate change and consider environmental protection their responsibility towards future generations. This is a pressing challenge which we have to overcome together.”

Who is Hannah Ellis-Petersen? Examining her anti-India track record

The author of the controversial report, Hannah Ellis-Petersen, serves as the South Asian correspondent for The Guardian and has built a consistent track record of highly contentious reporting on India. 

Her presence at politically motivated domestic protests, such as a recent Jantar Mantar demonstration organised by the Cockroach Janta Party, raises questions about journalistic neutrality. 

Her past coverage includes presenting the humanitarian Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) as a manifestation of the “toxic masculinity of Modi’s Hindutva politics” and labelling the 2020 anti-Hindu Delhi riots as a balanced “clash between Hindus and Muslims,” which downplayed targeted violence. 

Screengrab of the tweets by Hannah Ellis-Petersen

From characterising school uniform regulations in Karnataka as a sweeping “hijab ban” to framing the lawful reclamation of historical temple sites as “rewriting India’s history,” her portfolio frequently draws allegations of institutional bias. Furthermore, a fact-finding report by the Centre for Democracy, Pluralism and Human Rights (CDPHR) on the 2022 Leicester unrest explicitly cited The Guardian for institutional bias and for relying on misinformation rather than verified police accounts.

Screengrab of the tweets by Hannah Ellis-Petersen

Hannah Ellis-Petersen also wrote several provocative pieces for The Guardian, where she tried to guilt-trip Hindus for the Ram Janmabhoomi verdict and the Pran Pratistha of the Ram Mandir. She also tried to dilute the significance of the events by referencing the disputed structure that once stood atop the grand Hindu temple. 

The propaganda of Hannah Ellis-Petersen is not limited to shaming the Hindu community or downplaying atrocities committed against them by Islamists. She has authored articles, wherein she dehumanised Hindus participating in Kumbh Mela as ‘Covid superspreaders’ despite no evidence to back her claims.

Ellis-Petersen’s recent journalistic output continues to favour controversial political figures over objective legal analysis. On June 30th, she published a sympathetic profile of Umar Khalid, the prime accused in the larger conspiracy case related to the 2020 Delhi riots. Titled “‘Humanity is a privilege’: Umar Khalid on his six years in an Indian jail without trial,” the piece largely bypassed the specific legal prosecution and evidentiary framework of the case. 

Instead, it painted Khalid as a left-wing rights campaigner and a victim of a government crackdown, using literary references to Dostoevsky and Bhagat Singh to build an emotional narrative. This consistent pattern of choosing sentimentality over legal and historical facts reinforces the view that reports concerning India’s leadership are heavily influenced by preexisting editorial agendas.

Conclusion

The controversy surrounding PM Modi’s award in Seychelles highlights the deep disconnect between localised administrative transitions and international media narratives. While opposition groups and Western correspondents framed the “Guardian of the Blue Horizon” award as a rushed, synthetic honour designed for political vanity, an examination of Seychelles’ legislative history reveals a nation undergoing a comprehensive overhaul of its domestic honours system.

By focusing entirely on typographical errors and relying on polarising commentators, publications like The Guardian often miss the substantive diplomatic and environmental partnerships driving India’s foreign policy. Ultimately, these reports tend to reveal more about the entrenched biases of the correspondents writing them than the actual geopolitical realities on the ground.

UNESCO warns Pakistan of World Heritage Site delisting for using cement on Taxila sites: The farce of Pakistan’s ‘old civilisation’ rebranding

Shraddha Pandey
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UNESCO warns Pakistan of World Heritage Site delisting for using cement on Taxila sites: The farce of Pakistan’s ‘old civilisation’ rebranding

In a recently held unilateral international conference on the defunct Indus Waters Treaty held in Islamabad, Pakistan’s Information and Broadcasting Minister Attaullah Tarar said that he ‘proudly’ tells people abroad that Pakistanis are “children of Indus Valley Civilisation”. This supposed pride, however, is as real as its claim that there are no terrorists in Pakistan. The country has recently been called out by UNESCO for undermining the integrity of two Vedic-era sites in Taxila or Takshashila.

UNESCO warns removal from World Heritage Sites list for using cement to ‘conserve’ Vedic-era Taxila sites

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has formally asked Pakistan to reverse recent ‘reconstructions’ and “unnecessary interventions” at Mohra Moradu, a Buddhist monastery and stupa complex from the Kushan era, and Sirkap, the Indo-Greek city layer. Both these sites are located in the Taxila (Takshashila) archaeological complex in present-day Pakistan’s Rawalpindi district. These sites are UNESCO-recognised World Heritage Sites from the post-Indus Valley Civilisation period (around 2nd century BCE to 5th century CE).

Pakistan, a cultureless Islamic Republic suffering from an identity crisis, long dismissed its pre-Islamic, essentially Hindu past as an age of Jahiliyyah or the era of spiritual darkness that achieved redemption only after the arrival of Islam through Mohammad Bin Qasim.

However, Pakistan resorted to promoting Taxila via its museum projects, heritage initiatives and tourism campaigns, to attract foreign visitors, as a part of the broader agenda to appropriate the Indus Valley Civilisation and its Hindu history, although by either downplaying or extricating its Hinduness.

Pakistan’s desperation for material gains from remnants of the pre-Islamic past of ancient Indian regions that now fall within its periphery lacks required sensitivity in the preservation of the IVC-related and other historical sites.

This is evident from the fact that Pakistan’s Department of Archaeology and Museums used cement and modern masonry at Mohra Moradu and Sirkap, under its ‘conservation’ work. UNESCO has deemed this a violation of internationally accepted methods and principles for preservation of historical monuments and has harmed the authenticity and integrity of the Vedic-era sites.

Consequently, UNESCO recently held a meeting with senior Pakistani government officials and warned Pakistan that if the recent interventions are not reversed at parts of the World Heritage Site and corrective measures are not taken, Taxila would be put on the UN body’s List of World Heritage in Danger.

Highlighting the seriousness of its warning, the UNESCO officials told Pakistan that the organisation earlier removed a World Heritage Site in Germany from the list over improper conservation methods.

The matter first came to the UN body’s notice in March this year after a visitor shared photos and videos with Pakistan’s Permanent Delegate to UNESCO in Paris, showing how the original walls had been replaced with new modern masonry and even had their height increased during ‘conservation’ work. UNESCO took note of the matter; its officials conducted a joint technical visit to the Taxila Museum and other related sites on 12th June, along with Pakistan’s Department of Archaeology and Museums and Ministry of National Heritage and Culture.

Notably, the ancient city of Takshashila is a layered site with deep roots in the Indian subcontinent’s history. The city features in Vedic-era literature, Mahabharat and Buddhist Jatakas as a renowned centre of learning. Taxila later became a hub of Gandharan Buddhist culture, Greco-Buddhist art, and one of the world’s oldest and greatest universities.

Pivoting away from dismissing its pre-Islamic history as an era of ‘Jahilliyah’, Pakistan is feigning love for Indus Valley Civilisation, and appropriating ancient Hindu scholars and warriors as its esteemed ancestors.

While in rhetoric, Pakistan is promoting IVC and Gandharan heritage as ‘ancient Pakistan’, the 78-year-old Islamic Republic has demonstrated historical neglect of the region’s ancient history and its archaeological remnants.

From IVC sites like Mohenjo-daro and Harappa to Taxila and Buddhist sites in the Swat Valley area, the Pakistani governments over the decades have failed to prioritise principled conservation of these historical sites. Neither the absolute Hindu-hating Jihadist military dictators nor the military-backed ‘democratic’ governments cared much about the Indus Valley Civilisation, the pre-Islamic historical sites and their conservation.

The pre-Islamic sites faced neglect and excuses of resource and budget constraints; no such hindrance occurred when it came to protecting and renovating Islamic heritage sites.

In October 2009, the 7th-century CE rock-carved Buddha statue was dynamited and defaced by Pakistan Army-harboured Taliban Jihadis, who also attacked many Kushan-era stupas. The Taliban terrorists drilled holes into the face, shoulders, and feet of the statue, filled them with explosives, and detonated them, destroying the statue’s face and upper body, in an apparent emulation of the 2001 Bamiyan Buddhas destruction in Afghanistan.

Besides Islamic intolerance for even archaeological remnants of Kafirs, locals even looted Buddhist relics and illegally excavated some historical sites in the Swat Valley region and sold the priceless artefacts on the black market.

In many cases, the third or fourth generation converted Muslim descendants of Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists attach no significance to the historicity of archaeological sites and encroach on them.

Not to mention, the Pakistani populace, with tacit backing of their administrations, destroyed countless pre-partition Hindu temples and recently razed a 125-year-old Gurudwara in Panjab’s Farooqabad.

It must be recalled how in 2023, Pakistan, in its bid to erase the region’s Hindu past, demolished the Hinglaj Mata Mandir (temple) in Sindh province.

Pakistan also destroyed the Sharda Peeth Mandir, which is another Hindu shrine along the Line of Control (LoC). Ironically, the ancient Hindu temple was recognised as a UNESCO heritage site, although that status could not save it from Pakistani hatred for Hinduism.

On one hand, Pakistan is rebranding itself as a ‘civilisational state’ and promoting IVC sites as its national pride; on the other, it is destroying or damaging its pre-Islamic archaeological sites. This is when the Pakistani government and a significant section of common people claim to be ‘custodians’ of the Indus Valley Civilisation, although Field Marshal Asim Munir intermittently reminds his countrymen how Pakistani Muslims are different from Hindus in all aspects of life and how they must not forget the divisive and hateful two-nation theory.

Regardless of whether a military dictator is holding the reins of power directly, or through a puppet representative, Pakistan has undergone deeper and deeper Islamisation.

For decades, the Pakistani discourse emphasised descent from Arabs, Turks, Persians, or Central Asians, the ‘Ashraf’ narrative of foreign and ‘pure’ Muslim ancestry.

During the reign of General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan underwent significant cultural and historical rewriting.

The Zia regime, which lasted for a decade, beginning in 1977, modified school curricula for Islamiat and Pakistan Studies to instil and assert an Islamic identity by enforcing a psychological and cultural alignment with Arab history, delineating pre-Islamic roots of the fourth- or fifth-generation converted Muslims whose ancestors were predominantly Hindus.

For over 70 years, Pakistani school curricula, political discourse, media, and even the entertainment industry, to some extent, celebrated Islamic conquests, falsely convincing the Pakistani Muslim populace that they are descendants of ‘warrior races’ like Turks, Arabs, everyone but Hindus, although they were just one DNA test away from discovering the ‘unsettling’ truth. They continue to present Muhammad bin Qasim’s 8th-century invasion of Sindh as a watershed and celebratory moment for Pakistani Muslims.

On one hand, Pakistan is labelling Pāṇini, Chanakya, Raja Purushottama and other historical Hindu Sanatani figures as ‘ancient Pakistanis’, on the other hand, they name their missiles after Ghaznavi, Ghori, Abdali, all Islamic barbarians and invaders. For decades, Pakistani Islamists and politicians discouraged Sarees, Bindi and other such Hindu attire and ornaments merely because of inextricable Hindu influence, dismissing them derogatorily as ‘Hinduana’.

But now, Pakistan has adopted a Janusian approach, wherein it is keeping the country Islamised to avoid broader backlash in a country where even QR-codes can trigger a ‘blasphemy’ row, while also pretentiously embracing the pre-Islamic past and retrofitting facts to appropriate the history of ancient India. It is the same Pakistan that discriminates against the Ahmadiyya sect of Muslims for not being Muslim enough, and kills, rapes, forcibly converts to Islam, and treats its Hindu minorities as subhumans.

None other than Indians know it better that Pakistan’s newfound love for its pre-Islamic past is fake and self-interest driven. Adopting a contradictory approach has been Pakistan’s 78-year-old DNA.

Pakistan’s Quaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a pork eater, founded Pakistan. An Islamic fanatic, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto portrayed himself as a socialist ‘reformist’, and yet he ostracised Ahmadiyyas from Islam and made Islam Pakistan’s state religion.

Similar was the story of Benazir Bhutto, who the West hailed as ‘liberal’ Iron Lady while Taliban emerged and thrived under her watch. Nawaz Sharif, Pervez Musharraf, and even Imran Khan, all had their own contradictory philosophies when in power, reflecting how opportunism come naturally to Pakistani leaders.

Now Pakistan is promoting Harappa and Mohenjo-daro as national pride, because these IVC sites are more than just archaeological remnants. They are diplomatic assets and economic resources; Pakistan wants to cash in. Pakistan gets UNESCO funding and uses cultural diplomacy to whitewash its global terror hub image. Pakistan is attracting foreign archaeological protection initiatives, including the UK-based Cultural Protection Fund, to preserve ‘ancient Pakistani’ heritage. The move is sinister.

Pakistan is seeking the West’s support for its agenda of securing global recognition as the primary inheritor and custodian of the Indus Valley Civilisation, even as around 60% of IVC sites lie in India. Pakistan aims to dilute India’s ancient civilisational claim and attach the ‘civilisational state’ label to its own name.

OpIndia highlighted earlier how ISPR bots are concocting an IVC versus Indo-Gangetic Civilisation narrative to establish a present-day borders-based rivalry narrative.

Pakistan’s recent ancient India history appropriation manoeuvres are directly linked to the Indus Waters Treaty, the wretched water-sharing agreement signed in 1960, that the Modi government has scrapped indefinitely in response to the April 2025 Pahalgam Islamic terror attack by Pakistan-sponsored jihadis.

Indus is the lifeline of Pakistan, and its agriculture heavily depends on its waters. With the Modi government not budging to Pakistan’s nuclear threats, farcical international court verdicts, and not heeding the desperate pleas of Pakistani officials, the hostile neighbour is playing a narrative game.

Pakistan is selectively embracing, claiming, rather, appropriating only the Indus Valley Civilisation, as evident from its neglect and insensitive ‘conservation’ of Taxila sites since they do not belong to the IVC-era.

This selective embrace seeks global support by building a sympathy-evoking argument that the Indus River is directly linked to the Indus Valley Civilisation, and since the IVC is ‘Pakistani’ heritage, it is legally and morally wrong for India to deprive Pakistan of access to present-day resources linked to its heritage. Pakistan’s whole pivot from ‘we are full Turkish, Arab blood’ to ‘we are children of Indus’ is a pressure tactic in the making.

‘EVM hack’ conspiracy theorists use BAT-BMS E-Rickshaw hack cases to push their agenda again: Here is why they are wrong, and stupid

Dhruv Mishra
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‘EVM hack’ conspiracy theorists use BAT-BMS E-Rickshaw hack cases to push their agenda again: Here is why they are wrong, and stupid

Over the past few days, a wave of videos has taken over Indian social media showing something that looks straight out of a spy thriller: a person casually pulls out their phone, taps a button, and a moving e-rickshaw a few metres away simply stops. No wires, no contact, but with an app called BAT-BMS. The clips have racked up millions of views, with people filming themselves pranking rickshaw drivers mid-route, and the panic has spread just as fast as the footage.

Predictably, the story didn’t stay contained to e-rickshaws for long. It didn’t take long for a section of X to connect the dots in a very different direction: if a random phone app can shut down a vehicle over Bluetooth, why should anyone trust Electronic Voting Machines?

Cockroach Janta Party posted a sarcastic tweet claiming the same on Thursday, saying, “It’s worth noting that A running e-rickshaw can be shut down with a mobile app, but an EVM cannot be hacked.” The tweet included the emoji for ‘dropping a wildly awkward secret’.

Congress leader Deepak Bishnoi made a similar post, suggesting that EVMs also can be hacked from mobile phone.

“Journalist” Mukesh Kumar Verma posted in Hindi on X, ‘The question was: If a moving E-Rickshaw can be shut down via a mobile app using BAT-BMS, then why can’t an EVM be hacked?’

Several other users on X made similar post, mostly in Hindi, saying it is worth noting that e-rickshaws can be hacked but EVMs can’t be hacked.

EVM is a device central to how India elects its government. Are they truly unhackable? The logic sounds intuitive at first glance. It is also, on closer inspection, built on a foundation that doesn’t hold up. Before we answer the question, “Is it possible to hack an EVM like an e-rickshaw or not?” let us discuss what is actually going on with e-rickshaws because the real story is less about hacking and more about an unlocked door nobody bothered to lock.

What’s Actually Happening

To understand why the “hack” is not really a hack, we need to know three things: What is BMS, why it has Bluetooth, and why that Bluetooth link matters.

The BMS: a battery’s built-in bodyguard

The Battery management system (BMS) is the electronic brain of a rechargeable battery pack. In simple words, every lithium-ion battery pack, the kind increasingly used in e-rickshaws instead of older lead-acid batteries, has a small chip inside, known as a Battery Management System or BMS. Its job is to constantly monitor the battery’s voltage, temperature, and charge level, and cut power immediately if something looks unsafe, like overheating or a short circuit.

This is a genuine safety feature. Without it, lithium batteries would be far more prone to fires and failures. To do this cutting, the BMS uses tiny electronic switches. When the BMS decides power needs to stop flowing, it flips the switch, and the vehicle loses power within milliseconds, not because something broke, but because the system worked exactly as designed.

Why is Bluetooth even involved

Many inexpensive battery manufacturers, a lot of them Chinese producers operating at scale, incorporate Bluetooth into the BMS so owners, technicians and fleet operators can check battery health from a phone instead of physically opening the battery casing. It’s a convenience feature: see charge level, cycle count, temperature, all from an app, without any tools.

One of such an app is named BAT-BMS, app at the centre of the viral videos is one such tool. However, several other similar apps are also being used. It was built by Chinese company Shenzhen Grenergy Technology primarily for solar and off-grid battery systems, not specifically for the vehicles. It just happens to be compatible with the same type of BMS chip that many e-rickshaw batteries use.

Where it goes wrong

Here’s the actual vulnerability: to keep costs down, a large number of these budget battery units are shipped, sold, and installed without ever setting a password on that Bluetooth connection. E-rickshaws are made in India by a large number of local units, and such manufacturers skipped adding proper security features like encryption or password protection on these Bluetooth links while buying BMS units in bulk from China. Dealers rarely configure it, and drivers are almost never told it exists. The result is a battery quietly broadcasting itself over Bluetooth, wide open, to any phone within roughly 15 metres running a compatible app.

This is a classic case of a consumer product cutting corners on security for convenience and price.

So when someone in these viral videos “hacks” an e-rickshaw, what’s really happening is this: their phone finds an unsecured battery management system nearby, connects to it because nothing was stopping it from connecting, and sends the same shutdown command a technician would use for legitimate maintenance. It isn’t bypassing encryption or breaking into a system. It’s walking through a door that was never given a lock.

Notably, the Union Government has already ordered the removal of apps like BAT-BMS and Epoch Li-ion from app stores after their widespread use to disable e-rickshaws remotely. After the videos went viral, BAT-BMS was updated to require a password from the vehicle’s owner to control it. But other apps continued to allow control without permission.

Why “EVM Hack” Doesn’t Follow

This is where the argument falls apart, and it’s worth being precise about why, rather than just dismissing it. EVMs are built on a fundamentally different principle. India’s Electronic Voting Machines are standalone units. They have no Bluetooth, no Infrared, no Wi-Fi, no internet connectivity, and no wireless radio of any kind. This isn’t an oversight; it’s the entire design philosophy. An EVM cannot be remotely accessed because remote access was deliberately engineered out of it from the start. There is no equivalent of the “unlocked Bluetooth door” to walk through, because there is no door at all.

The hardware itself does not even have the ports or chips needed for such wireless communication, which means there is simply no way for someone to reach them through a phone app or any remote method.

There is a reason why EVM votes are counted by viewing the numbers on each EVM, and adding them, because the data from EVM can’t be read from any external device.

Any attempt to tamper with an EVM would require physically opening the machine and making changes inside it. Even this route is blocked by strong election protocols followed by the Election Commission of India. Before every election, the machines go through multiple rounds of checks, including mock polls conducted openly in front of agents from all contesting candidates. Once the machines are sealed and taken to the polling stations, they remain under constant watch by polling agents who represent different candidates.

During counting as well, party representatives are present at every step, and the machines stay sealed until the very end. Any sign of physical interference would be spotted immediately, leading to rejection of that machine’s results and possible legal action. These layered safeguards have been in place for years and have been upheld by the Supreme Court multiple times after detailed examinations.

Trying to say that a vulnerability in a cheap vehicle’s Bluetooth battery module somehow proves EVMs can also be hacked is like arguing that because a bicycle lock can be picked with a simple screwdriver, therefore a bank vault can also be opened with a similar screwdriver.

A weak lock on one product says nothing about a different product with no lock to test. The e-rickshaw vulnerability exists because a specific category of budget battery control hardware shipped with a wireless feature left unsecured. Drawing a line from that to EVMs requires treating “electronic” as if it’s a single, uniform category where a flaw anywhere implies a flaw everywhere. It isn’t. A smart bulb, a laptop, and a pacemaker are all “electronic,” but a vulnerability in one tells you nothing about the others unless they share the actual attack surface: the specific wireless interface, protocol, or access point that was exploited. EVMs simply don’t share the one that failed here.

This is a familiar pattern, not a new one. Every time a viral tech story breaks, a phone hack, a Bluetooth flaw, a data leak, a segment of social media treats it as fresh ammunition for a pre-existing belief, regardless of whether the technical details have anything in common. It’s not really an argument about EVMs at all. It’s an existing narrative looking for its next hook, and the e-rickshaw story happened to be trending at the right moment. The reasoning doesn’t start from the evidence and arrive at a conclusion; it starts from the conclusion and goes looking for evidence that sounds vaguely similar.

That’s the real pattern worth calling out – not just the specific claim, but the habit of reaching for “if X can be hacked, so can Y” without checking whether X and Y share anything beyond both being electronic. It’s a rhetorical shortcut, not an investigation.

Ethanol-blended Petrol is here to stay, but forcing one blend on all vehicles hurts people: Multiple choices from E10 to E100 at different prices is the only fair way

Raju Das
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Ethanol-blended Petrol is here to stay, but forcing one blend on all vehicles hurts people: Multiple choices from E10 to E100 at different prices is the only fair way

From April 1, 2026, the government of India has made it compulsory for every petrol pump in India to sell only E20 petrol, that is, petrol mixed with 20 percent ethanol, with a minimum octane rating of 95. Pure petrol without any ethanol has almost disappeared from the market, except for some premium brands like Indian Oil XP100, a 100-octane super-premium petrol that costs over ₹150 per litter.

This sudden and complete shift has created a lot of anger and worry among owners of cars and two-wheelers. While reducing our dependence on imported crude oil and helping farmers through ethanol production are good goals, the way this policy is being pushed, by removing all choice and making one single blend mandatory for everyone, is creating real problems for ordinary citizens who cannot afford to change their vehicles every few years.

Older vehicles not built for higher ethanol content

It is worth remembering that ethanol blending itself is not a completely new idea in India. The previous UPA government had introduced the E10 programme, mixing 10 percent ethanol in petrol. But at that time, it was not made compulsory like we see today. Pure petrol without any blending continued to be sold at pumps across the country. Because of this, owners of older vehicles, especially those made before 2011, could still buy 100 percent petrol if their vehicle was not comfortable with even 10 percent ethanol.

Most vehicles sold in India after 2011 are E10 compliant, therefore such vehicles kept running on E10 without any issues. Now that E20 has become the only fuel available everywhere and pure petrol has been removed, the same older vehicles and even many made till 2022 or early 2023 are in difficulty, as the majority of E20-compliant vehicles started to enter the market from April 2023 only with the introduction of BS6 Phase 2 emission norms. This means that most vehicles that were made after 2011 and before April 2023 are E10 compatible, and they were not made to run on petrol with 20% added ethanol.

Concern about damages and mileage

It is feared that ethanol, even in small amounts, can slowly damage vehicles that were never built to handle it. Ethanol easily absorbs moisture from the air. This moisture causes rust and corrosion in metal fuel tanks, fuel lines, injectors and other parts in older systems. It also attacks rubber hoses, plastic parts, seals and gaskets. These materials can swell, become hard, crack or leak over time. In vehicles with carburettors or older fuel systems not calibrated for ethanol, the air-fuel mixture can turn leaner, leading to loss of power, rough idling, hard starting (especially in cold weather) and clogged filters.

While the government has cited studies claiming that E20 does not cause harm to older vehicles, it has admitted to some damage.

Mileage also drops because ethanol has less energy content than pure petrol, sometimes by 3 to 6 percent or more in older vehicles. While new vehicles made from April 2023 onwards are designed to handle E20, the large number of older cars, bikes and three-wheelers still running on Indian roads were mostly certified only up to E10 or lower. Forcing E20 on them is unfair and will lead to higher repair bills and earlier replacement of parts for many vehicle owners.

No discount on blended petrol

On top of these technical problems, the government’s decision not to give any discount or price reduction on blended petrol looks questionable. Ethanol is produced in India and is cheaper than imported crude. Blending it should bring down the overall cost for oil companies. Yet the price at the pump has not come down in a way that gives real relief to consumers. At the same time, because of lower mileage, people are now spending more money to travel the same distance.

The common man is bearing the double burden, possible damage to his vehicle and higher effective cost per kilometre, without any compensation. This feels like the benefits are going elsewhere while the ordinary citizen pays the price.

The Union Government has decided to waive excise duty on blended petrol, but surprisingly, it does not cover E20 petrol, which everyone is forced to buy at present. The exemption covers E22, E25, E27 and E30 fuel blends, which contain 22%, 25%, 27% and 30% blended ethanol. These blends are not available in the market yet, they are in the pipeline and will be introduced soon.

However, there is no plan to reintroduce E10 petrol, which means that vehicles made before 2023 are forced to run on fuel they were never built for. This makes it a very uncertain situation for owners of such vehicles, as they have the constant fear that their vehicle may break down at any time, requiring costly repair.

Consumers deserve options

The right solution is simple and already working in other countries. The government should make different ethanol blends available in the market at the same time, like E10, E20, E30 and even higher grades for new flex-fuel vehicles. These should be sold through separate dispensers or clear options at petrol stations, with proper price differences. Just like people today choose between regular and premium petrol depending on their vehicle and budget, owners should be free to pick the blend that suits their car or bike.

Older vehicles should be able to continue on E10 or whatever lower blend is safe for them. Newer vehicles can use higher blends if they give better performance or if the price is attractive. Oil companies already manage multiple grades of petrol and diesel, adding a few more ethanol options is completely doable with some planning.

In many countries, people have the freedom to choose the right fuel for their vehicle. Different blends are available at the same petrol station at different prices, just like we have regular petrol, premium petrol and high-octane varieties today. In the United States, regular petrol is mostly E10, but E85 is widely available for flex-fuel vehicles, and drivers can also pick higher octane options. They decide what to fill based on what their car or bike can handle and what makes sense for their pocket. In Brazil, which pioneered the ethanol use in vehicles, fuel stations usually offer both regular gasoline blended with around 27 percent ethanol and nearly pure ethanol (E100).

Flex-fuel cars can run on any mix, and owners choose what they want according to price and suitability. Several other countries in Europe and Asia also keep lower blends like E5 or E10 alongside higher ones so that older vehicles are not forced into trouble. India should adopt the same practical system instead of a rigid one-size-fits-all rule.

The government has already notified standards for E22, E25, E27 and E30. As per reports, petrol pumps will offer multiple blends of petrol at the same time, and owners will be able to choose what is best for their vehicle. But there is no proposal for a lower blend like E10 for old vehicles. These higher blends should come as choices alongside lower ones, not as replacements that wipe out everything else. This will protect the millions of people who still drive older but perfectly serviceable vehicles.

It will also reduce unnecessary tension and repair costs on the roads. A flexible system will actually help achieve the bigger goals of lower oil imports and better use of domestic ethanol, because more people will accept the policy willingly instead of feeling forced.

Forcing one blend on everyone, especially when pure petrol has vanished, and older vehicles have no safe option left, is neither fair nor practical. The government should quickly move towards giving real consumer choice with multiple blends and sensible price points. That is how mature fuel markets work in other countries, and that is what will serve Indian vehicle owners best in the long run. The common man deserves that consideration.

Donald Trump and his family earned over $1.4 billion from crypto investments, US president claims he was ‘unaware’: Read how his massive wealth is linked to a Pakistani businessman

Rukma Rathore
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Donald Trump and his family earned over $1.4 billion from crypto investments, US president claims he was ‘unaware’: Read how his massive wealth is linked to a Pakistani businessman

The bitcoin empire of United States President Donald Trump has come under attention after his financial declaration, which showed that digital assets have become the prime contributors and replaced his traditional real estate and golf businesses as main sources of personal wealth. On 30th June (Tuesday), he reported proceeds exceeding $1.4 billion ($1,430,390,415) from his family’s cryptocurrency endeavours in 2025 in the annual disclosure submitted to the US Office of Government Ethics.

More importantly, the implication of this windfall stretches far out of its scope and has a very notable geopolitical connection with Pakistan.

Trump firms reaped about $800 million from World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company founded by him and US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff along with their sons. It included more than $520 million from the sale of cryptocurrency tokens and over $250 million from the sale of shares in the World Liberty business. The income is split between the Trump family.

The 927-page mandatory financial submission revealed that $635 million were obtained in royalties from an entity named Celebration Coins, behind the Trump meme coin. A direct revenue of $594 million was generated from World Liberty Financial and nearly $197 million from an equity sale involving Stablecoin Holdco.

The report highlighted the radical shift in Trump’s fortunes due to cryptocurrency. He unveiled $57.35 million from token sales at World Liberty in his statement from a year ago, which grew ninefold in the latest documents. His family has already minted at least $2.3 billion from cryptocurrency-related ventures in his second term, according to Reuters.

Interestingly, Trump started to implement policies and efforts that the industry found advantageous, such as establishing federal regulations for stablecoins and reducing the intervention of US Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding its monitoring.

According to reports, the filing indicated well over $580 million in crypto-related turnover, including around $515 million from World Liberty Financial token sales and $65 million from sales of equity in its parent entity. The Trump family is entitled to around 75% of the net outcome from the sale of World Liberty Financial tokens in addition to a fixed, recurring portion of transactional profits that are directly related to the platform’s own digital assets.

Additionally, he informed to accumulate greater than $80 million from settlements with many media outlets and $52 million from his company’s licensing of his name to foreign real estate developers, primarily through Middle Eastern partnerships.

Trump mentioned a 15% rise in revenue to slightly above $500 million at his golf and resort properties. His golf club in adjacent West Palm Beach experienced a 27% boost in revenue while his Mar-a-Lago club also known as the Winter White House in Florida’s Palm Beach underwent a sharp surge from $50 million in 2024 to $77 million. He celebrated the winners of his second annual meme coin competition there in April.

Last year, Trump’s Los Angeles course suffered a decline in revenue. Trump received a loan of more than $50 million from Charles Schwab Bank last year, but the purpose was not disclosed. His profits from his real estate properties failed to register similar growth. He claimed income from a ⁠dozen substantial commercial real estate ownerships, mostly interests in projects he constructed or possessed decades ago.

The paperwork provided income ranges rather than precise rent amounts for buildings such as Trump Tower in New York which were either lower or the same as the figures conveyed ten years ago. Trump also gathered millions from other business activities. He has gained at least $2.3 billion from his various properties after his return to the presidential office much beyond $600 million in 2024.

Trump asserts that he was unaware of the massive size of cryptocurrency holdings, White house denies conflict of interest

“The way I view crypto is a little differently. We have to be at the top, otherwise China is going to take it over. Like for instance AI. We’re leading substantially in AI over China and everybody else,” Trump stated while rejecting concerns over a potential conflict of interest while talking to CNBC.

He cited federal conflict-of-interest statutes to allege that there was “nothing illegal” or “wrong” with the cryptocurrency investment and the president and vice president are not obligated to abstain from decisions that might have an impact on their financial interests.

“No, but that was just something I could know about it, right? I mean, there’s nothing illegal. There’s nothing wrong with it,” Trump expressed while talking about his ignorance of his family’s whopping cryptocurrency operations. He proclaimed, “I’m a really good businessperson, I’ve always made money. I made a tremendous amount of money, more than I would have ever thought I would have made,” in his characteristic self-complimentary manner.

He further defended, “I let people invest it. I don’t even speak to – I don’t even know who they are. My son Eric handles it. I don’t talk to him about things such as this. I think I’d be allowed to, I’m not sure even what the status is, but I don’t.” He indicated that even if he had knowledge of their identities, it would not be considered a legal offence.

The Republican leader reiterated, “I didn’t. There’s nothing illegal with that. I could know,” and argued there was no legal compulsion “to recuse yourself on every decision running the country that could have anything to do with you. It just isn’t feasible to do it.”

According to him, his children were unable to fully distance themselves from the decisions he made as president due to the close-knit structure of the Trump organisation and complained that they were unfairly scrutinised just because they were pursuing their business interests during his time at the White House and pointed out that he has refused to take a government salary while serving there.

“You know why I’m profiting, because the stock market’s going up. Everybody’s profiting. I don’t get involved in my personal finances. We have funds that run my money. I’ve made a lot of money before I became president, and they invest my money, and I don’t talk to them,” Trump again told reporters.

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly hailed him for making US “the crypto capital of the world” and stated, “Neither the president nor his family has ever engaged – or will ever engage – in conflicts of interest.”

She contended, “All actions by him and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people – and any so-called ‘reporters’ pushing otherwise are recycling the same, tired, false narrative that Democrats and the legacy media have been pushing for a decade.”

It is noteworthy that Trump put his assets in a family-managed trust that is supervised by his sons to prevent any clash of interests, but he continues to be the sole beneficiary. He has indirect control and the authority to dismiss trustees or dissolve the trust at any time.

Trump used to denounce cryptocurrencies and referred to Bitcoin as a “scam” and a “disaster waiting to happen” in 2021. He enphasised that it was “not money” and criticised it as “highly volatile and based on thin air” after becoming president. He even warned that cryptocurrency assets enabled illicit underground markets. “We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever. It is called the United States Dollar,” he wrote on social media in 2019.

However, he voiced his desire to crown the United States as the “crypto capital of the planet” in a startling U-turn during his presidential campaign three years later. An executive order to “support the responsible growth” of the cryptocurrency business constituted one of his first acts after he was voted to power.

How Pakistan entered the picture

World Liberty Financial was launched when Trump was looking for his political comeback in 2024 and is intertwined with Pakistan after years of strained relationship between the two countries. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was inked between a WLF subsidiary and Pakistan’s Ministry of Finance and Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority to incorporate the company’s dollar-backed stablecoin into the country’s regulated payment system. The project envisages employing the stablecoin to facilitate billions of dollars in remittances and cross-border transactions.

Prime minister Shehbaz Sharif, finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, Pakistan army chief field marshal Asim Munir, Steve Witkoff and his son Zachary Witkoff who is WLF’s chief executive were present at the occasion. However, an intriguing presence at the gathering also attracted major coverage.

Bilal Bin Saqib, a British Pakistani businessman who served as WLF’s advisor before rising to the position of chairman of Pakistan’s cryptocurrency regulator was instrumental in uniting the two parties. He is also CEO of the Pakistan Crypto Council and was appointed as Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency previously.

Saqib who was largely unknown abruptly emerged as one of the most powerful persons in the Islamic Republic. He even joined Pakistan’s delegations to the US and was spotted with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago club. He developed ties with prominent names in the cryptocurrency field, including Changpeng Zhao alias CZ the controversial billionaire running Binance Holdings Limited.

Saqib presented Pakistan’s advancements in the cryptocurrency sector at a Las Vegas Bitcoin conference last year in May. Donald Trump Junior, Eric Trump and US Vice President JD Vance attended the event. A few days later, Saqib convened with Bo Hines, the director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets during that period, at the White House.

However, Saqib’s meteoric ascent to the top has remained a dubious mystery, and he has also refrained from clarifying how he managed to carve out such an extraordinary space for himself.

The full 180-degree turnaround

The unforeseen changes have been occurring after Trump reassessed his stand towards Pakistan, akin to his decision regarding cryptocurrency after insisting that he was “not a fan.” He had frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in military funding, accused Pakistan of providing the US with “nothing but lies and deceit” and charged Islamabad with providing sanctuary to terrorists while securing billions of dollars in US aid.

Now, he has persistently showcased a renewed allegiance to the rogue state by hosting Munir at an official lunch and calling him his “favourite field marshal” while also designating Baloch rebels as terrorists and committing to energy partnership in oil reserves and development of rare-earth resources in Pakistan. Islamabad was also selected as the location for negotiations between Tehran and Washington.

At the same time, the ties between US and India have continually endured major challenges as a result of Trump’s actions including imposing 25% (of total 50%) tariffs for procuring Russian oil and blaming New Delhi for the war in Ukraine. On the other hand, the Modi government also firmly countered his claims of brokering the ceasefire during “Operation Sindoor” while Pakistan expressed gratitude and even nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Moreover, JD Vance recently remarked that Munir is as close to him as his wife Usha, adding that he has spoken to him more than anyone else over the last three months, in a display of the bond between the two nations.

Conclusion

These situations have emerged concurrently with the affairs involving Pakistan and the Trump family in the world of cryptocurrency, giving rise to reasonable suspicions regarding the peculiar happenings. It is a carefully coordinated geopolitical strategy which has introduced the formal and institutional assimilation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan into the Trump family’s private decentralised finance (DeFi) framework.

Michael Kugelman, a resident senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council in Washington had shared, “Given how important personal connections are in the Trump White House’s policy process, Pakistan may well have bought itself some influence there that advantaged it when it pitched itself to Washington as a mediator. With this unconventional US administration, unconventional factors can help your cause, and that’s certainly the case with crypto.”

As the maxim goes, “In politics, there is no coincidence,” and definitely none in global politics or diplomacy. Thus, the bonhomie between Pakistan and the United States seems to be underpinned by deeper factors, particularly the business interests of the Trump family.

The proliferation of Trump’s cryptocurrency capital has once again highlighted the murky connections as well as the unpredictability and unreliability of a relationship with the US which is driven purely by self-interest.

‘Pakistan Army raises Jihadi groups but calls protesting civilians as terrorists’: JAAC declares in Rawalkot as PoK witnesses widespread protests, all you need to know

Shraddha Pandey
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‘Pakistan Army raises Jihadi groups but calls protesting civilians as terrorists’: JAAC declares in Rawalkot as PoK witnesses widespread protests, all you need to know

As the anti-Pakistan protests in PoJK entered their 24th day, Sardar Aman Khan, the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) leader, said that it was the Pakistan Army that gave Kashmiris guns and now calls them terrorists.

The JAAC is a coalition of civil society groups, local traders, and activists, with its central agenda rooted in long-standing economic and governance-related grievances, in addition to political representation. The outfit launched a massive protest against Pakistani authorities on 9th June 2026.

On 5th June, PoK’s Pakistani puppet authorities banned the JAAC under the Anti-Terrorism Act 2014, declaring it a proscribed organisation, citing threats to peace and security. Thereafter, internet and mobile services were also suspended in parts of the region.

On 8th June, violent clashes erupted in Rawalkot/Rawalakot in Poonch district between local protestors and occupying Pakistani forces, resulting in the killing of several locals.

On 9th June, the Jammu and Kashmir Awami Action Committee called a region-wide strike, resulting in closure of markets, transport, and institutions in major cities including Muzaffarabad.

Since then, protests and marches have continued and spread to Mirpur, Kotli, Bagh, and other areas with regular organisation of rallies, sit-ins, and marches. It was reported on 10th June that a Pakistani military helicopter on surveillance duty in the region crashed, killing 22 personnel onboard.

Pakistan Army harbours Jihadi terror groups, but calls unarmed PoK protestors terrorists: JAAC leader calls out Islamabad’s hypocrisy

Addressing a crowd of over 80,000 people in Rawalkot recently, JAAC’s Sardar Aman Khan said, “They say they were terrorists. Look, it was the Pakistan Army that put guns into the hands of Kashmiris. Kashmiris had guns because the Pakistan Army gave them those guns. The entire Pakistan Army did it. And today, they have the audacity to call us terrorists?”

Sardar Aman Khan also said that the Pakistan Army facilitated a public event by the Islamic terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad earlier this year.

The JAAC leader further alleged that the Deputy Commissioner of Rawalakot not only granted permission to Jaish-e-Mohammad, a notorious terrorist group, to organise an event but also provided security cover to the jihadis while cadres carrying assault rifles and swords marched through the city.

Kashmir is not Pakistan: PoK residents blast an oppressive Islamabad’s food supplies blockade

Last month, while addressing a demonstration at Rawalakot’s Eidgah Ground, JAAC’s Sardar Aman Khan delivered a strong speech declaring that Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir is not a part of Pakistan and that PoK residents don’t need Pakistan.

“POK is not a part of Pakistan. We do not need Pakistan; rather, it is Pakistan that desperately needs POK,” Khan said.

He also warned Islamabad that if it continues to block supplies of food and other essentials from entering PoK, the local Kashmiris will seek “other roads”.

“If the Pakistani establishment continues to block food, let it be known that the remaining borders of PoJK could open up. If that happens, Islamabad will find itself begging the people of PoJK to stay,” Khan said.

Khan’s statement has been interpreted by many across both sides of the border as seeking support from India.

This came after guns failed to silence the people of PoK; Islamabad resorted to blocking the region’s food, fuel, and healthcare supplies. Pakistan is taking desperate measures to coerce anti-government protestors into submission.

PoK residents, including truck drivers and political leaders, said that vehicles carrying essential commodities like food grains, fuel, and medicines are being prevented from entering the illegally occupied territory.

Exhibiting its usual shamelessness, Pakistani authorities deny imposition of any deliberate blockade.

The Kashmiri protesters, however, remain undeterred and announced they will continue their sit-in and protests until the authorities act on their demands. They have also appealed to the United Nations, Amnesty International, the international media, and Kashmiris living abroad to draw global attention to the situation in the region.

Reports say that at least 58 people have died in the ensuing clashes and hundreds wounded. Of these, at least 11-12 were killed during the 8th and 9th June clashes.

Ever since the protests by PoK residents and violent crackdown by occupying Pakistani authorities began, several international human rights bodies have called out Pakistan.

In June, Amnesty International condemned designation of JAAC or JKJAAC as a ‘terrorist organisation’, and said, “The proscription of JKJAAC under anti-terror laws is disproportionate, unlawful and a violation of the right to freedom of association.”

Last month, a British parliamentary group asked the government for clarification on their assessment of the volatile situation in PoK. Bradford East MP Imran Hussain, the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kashmir, referenced recent reports from the area of a “communications blackout, as part of a broader lockdown, alongside escalating tensions, and restrictions affecting the ability of people in the region to communicate with the outside world” in a letter to the Foreign Office of the United Kingdom 

The movement’s fiercest voice and JAAC leader, Shaukat Nawaz Mir, accused Pakistani authorities of committing a massacre in Rawalakot and even shooting protestors at sight to suppress the protests. On 1st July, Mir was arrested by Pakistani authorities while heading towards a sit-in protest.

The 38-Point Charter and the reserved seats conundrum

The protests in PoK/PoJK are against Pakistan’s repressive policies. Locals claim that unarmed civilians were fired upon and that the bodies of some of those killed were taken away by authorities. During protests, the agitated locals have also raised “Azadi” slogans.

A local Kashmiri said, “Unarmed people are being shot at point-blank range, resulting in martyrdom. They have even taken away the bodies of our youth.”

In September-October 2025, the JAAC presented a comprehensive 38-point charter of demands during a massive protest and strike at that time.

The charter included demands related to accountability for killings of local Kashmiris, educational and heath infrastructure betterment, Rs 10 billion for electricity system upgrades, etc.

The JKAAC also sought reduction of PoK cabinet size to 20 members, limiting administrative secretaries, merging Ehtesab Bureau and Anti-Corruption bodies, aligning laws with federal standards, and curbing elite privileges.

In addition, the Committee demanded lower property transfer taxes, advance tax reductions, and opening merit in education admissions.

The most important demand was the formation of a high-powered committee to review “outside constituencies”, which are the 12 reserved seats for refugees from the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir who live elsewhere in Pakistan.

While it is reported that most of the demands have been heeded by the Pakistani regime, outside constituencies issues remain unresolved.

The unrest began with a dispute over 12 assembly seats in the 45-seat PoK Legislative Assembly, which are reserved for refugees from Indian Jammu and Kashmir. Local groups allege that Islamabad uses these seats to influence elections and install governments of its choice, essentially diluting local representation.

On 7th June, the PoK Supreme Court ruled that the 12 seats are ‘constitutionally protected’ and cannot be abolished without a constitutional amendment. Since the Pakistani regime uses these 12 reserved seats for installing its puppets in the PoK Assembly to retain strong control over the region, they are reluctant to accept the JKAAC’s demand.

It is ironic that the same Pakistan that calls Indian Kashmir its jugular vein, and wants to ‘liberate’ it from India, is killing Kashmiris in the region under its occupation. Pakistan maintains a tight and exploitative control over PoJK, the region it calls Azad Jammu and Kashmir. While Pakistan cries hoarse for Indian Kashmiris, who enjoy all kinds of facilities and equal access to resources, its Defence Minister Khwaja Asif calls the residents of PoK’s Rawalakot and Mirpur “not proper Kashmiris” just because they demand rights and dignity.

117 Indians and Pakistanis seek restoration of bilateral talks and ties: Read who are the Indian signatories of the Aman ki Asha letter to the two PMs

Shraddha Pandey
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117 Indians and Pakistanis seek restoration of bilateral talks and ties: Read who are the Indian signatories of the Aman ki Asha letter to the two PMs

Pakistan has repeatedly carried out jihadist attacks on India through its ISI-backed Islamic terrorist proxies for nearly three decades. Despite this record of anti-India hatred and fanaticism, the hostile neighbour continues to find sympathisers in India. These sympathisers are Islamo-leftists who would rather have India coddle Pakistan even as they stand on the dead bodies of Indian victims of Pakistan-sponsored Jihad, than give up the farcical Aman ki Asha. On 30th June, a letter was issued by a vague Centre for Peace and Progress appealing to Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers to resume dialogue and end “continued hostility”.

OpIndia analysed how the letter titled “Appeal to the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan by Concerned Citizens”, amplified Pakistan’s narratives and interests, even pushed for revival of the 2004-2007 Musharraf-Manmohan framework for Jammu and Kashmir, that would essentially require India conceding its legitimate claim on PoJK and giving Pakistan, an illegal occupier, a stakeholder status.

The Indian signatories of the letter include politicians, former officials, academics, and several Jammu and Kashmir-based leaders, all sharing the Islamo-leftist ideology and disdain for the Modi-led ruling dispensation.

It is pertinent to know who are the Indian signatories of the ‘peace appeal’, who want India to forget the victims of Pahalgam and numerous Pakistan-orchestrated Islamic terror attacks against Indian Kafirs and shoot in the leg by heeding a treacherous Pakistan led by Hindu-hating Asim Munir.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq: From Azadi to Aman ki Asha

Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq is a notorious Islamist and Kashmiri separatist. For years, Farooq was involved in an anti-India agenda and incited unrest against the Indian state in Jammu and Kashmir.

After the 2019 Pulwama terror attack, the security cover of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and several other separatists was removed amidst mounting public anger. The decision came on 17th February 2019, two days after Home Minister Rajnath Singh said that “there are some elements here who take money from Pakistan and ISI. I have told the officers that the security provided to such people should be reviewed”. 

Following the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution in August 2019, Farooq was placed under house arrest.

For years, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq operated his politics on Kashmiri separatism, and with its possibility gone, Hurriyat leader wants Indian government to hold talks with the same Pakistan, which is busy threatening India with war over Indus Waters Treaty instead of handing over Hafiz Saeed and other Jihadis to India.

Farooq Abdullah: The former J&K Chief Minister who long batted for Pakistan

Another controversial signatory of the ‘resume talks’ appeal is former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and J&K National Conference supremo Farooq Abdullah.

Farooq Abdullah was re-sworn in as Chief Minister in an NC-Congress coalition government in November 1986, following the infamous Rajiv-Farooq Accord. In mid-June 1988, spontaneous protests took place demanding a commitment to Islamise Kashmir through the enforcement of Shariah law. Between July and December 1989, Farooq Abdullah’s government freed 70 hardline, Pakistan-trained terrorists.

These, along with numerous local Islamic Jihadis, caused the killings, rape, and exodus of lakhs of Kashmiri Hindus. Mosques made declarations urging Kashmiri Hindu men to flee the valley, leaving their women behind. The chants ‘convert (to Islam), leave or die’ (Raliv, Galiv, Chaliv) echoed across the valley. Mosques also played inflammatory slogans like Kashmir mei agar rehna hai, Allah-O-Akbar kehna hai’ (If you want to stay in Kashmir, you have to say Allah-O-Akbar); ‘Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (What do we want here? Rule of Shariah); ‘Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san’ (We want Pakistan along with Hindu women but without their men).

While J&K was under Central government-appointed Governor Jagmohan when the exodus happened, it was the spike in jihadist attacks and mobilisation before Farooq Abdullah’s resignation that led to the horrific eventuality.

Decades passed; the same Farooq Abdullah, who once said that nobody can even ‘touch’ Article 370, let alone removing, witnessed its abrogation by the Modi government. And now, as his relevance is fading, the JKNC leader advocates resumption of India-Pakistan talks based on the pro-Pakistan Musharraf-Manmohan framework.

Farooq Abdullah is also the chairman of the People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), also known as the Gupkar Gang. It was established to reinstate Article 370, in Jammu and Kashmir. In October 2020, six parties formed the Gupkar Gang to reinstate Articles 370 and 35A and Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood. The National Conference (NC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peoples Conference (PC), Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI-M), Peoples Movement (PM), and Awami National Conference (ANC) were the first to ally. Congress joined the gang in November 2020. The Gupkar Gang and Pakistan have been on the same page over Jammu and Kashmir’s erstwhile special status.

Mehbooba Mufti: The terror apologist

The CPP-prepared letter has been signed by another former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, the daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Mufti is opportunism personified. When it was politically convenient, her party, PDP, allied with the ideological adversary BJP, and eventually broke the alliance over differences. Mufti turned anti-Modi sharply after the abrogation of Article 370.

In April this year, Mehbooba Mufti condemned the sealing of the Darul Uloom Jamia Siraj-ul-Uloom in Shopian’s Imam Sahib area in South Kashmir. This madarsa was found to be linked to the Pulwama attack, wherein 40 CRPF personnel lost their lives. Sajjad Ahmad Bhat, who played a key role in the attack by arranging the vehicle used in the bombing, had studied at this madrasa. 

Mehbooba Mufti had last year written an article for Islamo-leftist rag The Wire wherein she defended and whitewashed the heinous acts of terrorists Afzal Guru and Yasin Malik and put the blame on the Indian state. 

In September 2025, when a Muslim mob defaced the Ashoka emblem at the revered Hazratbal shrine in Jammu and Kashmir, Mufti termed the vandalism an act of “emotion” rather than a crime. “The people who vandalised after getting overcome with emotions are not against the emblem. It is not right to say they should be arrested under the Public Safety Act and called terrorists. This is blasphemy for us,” Mufti said.

Unsurprisingly, a jihadi terror apologist wants the Indian State to forget and forgive the Pakistani crimes against Indians without advocating accountability from the hostile neighbour.

Apoorvanand: Delhi Riots instigator and notorious Hinduphobe

Islamist sympathiser, Hinduphobe and Delhi University’s Hindi professor Apoorvanand is also among the signatories of the peace talks appeal. Apoorvanand has a history of anti-Hindu rhetoric. In May 2019, left-wing propaganda portal The Wire published an op-ed by Apoorvanand where the author called the Hindu slogan “Jai Shri Ram” an “expression of hooliganism”. Apporvanand, in his article, extended support to the bizarre incident when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had referred to ‘Jai Shri Ram’ chants as abuses hurled at her. He also spews venom against PM Modi on a regular basis.

In April 2023, he came out in support of Muslims and claimed that the idea of “Ghazwa-e-Hind” was evoked by Hindutvavadis to justify their violence and no Muslim talks about it. In a post on X quoting Yogendra Yadav, where he talked about the ideas of Khalistan, Ghazwa-e-Hind and Hindu Rashtra, Apoorvanand said, “Found it disappointing that while discussing Khalistan and Hindu Rashtra, it is thought necessary to bring GEH. Has any Indian organisation, or any individual given a call for it like the earlier two? GEH is evoked by Hindutvavadis to justify their violence. No Muslim talks about it.”

Apoorvanand has also been named in the 2020 anti-Hindu Delhi riots by accused Gulfisha and witness GAMA accusing him of being involved in the larger conspiracy leading to the violence in February 2020.

In May this year, Apoorvanand wrote an article for The Wire, in which he spewed venom against Hindus on Bakrid and painted Islamists as perpetual victims.

In June 2026, Apoorvanand appeared on a podcast, wherein he claimed that “every Hindu home has a potential murderer or rapist”. This came even as it is Muslim men who indulge in religious hate-driven love and rape jihad against Hindu and other non-Muslim women in India and around the world.

“The mass radicalisation of Hindus in India is taking place… in which, in every home, there is now a Hindu of this kind who is a potential murderer. If this Hindu is not a potential murderer, then he is a potential rapist. And if he is not directly committing rape, he is committing rape in his imagination or virtually,” he said.

Further, Apoorvanand blamed 1984 anti-Sikh riots on Hindus, and also mocked Hindu pluralism using the ’33 crore gods’ trope.

It is, however, unsurprising that an Islamist apologist who sympathises with Pakistani Islamic terrorist Ajmal Kasab, who killed hundreds of people in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, now wants India to return to the table with Pakistan.

Jawhar Sircar: The former TMC MP and perpetual Modi hater

Jawhar Sircar (also spelt Jawahar Sircar) also wants India to normalise relations with Pakistan. Sircar is the same person who called PM Modi an “Asura” (demon), and regularly peddles ideological agenda-driven fake news.

Jawhar Sircar’s hatred for Narendra Modi is old. Sircar was the Chief Executive Officer in Prasar Bharati from 2012 to 2016. On 27th April 2014, Doordarshan aired a 30-minute-long interview with the then Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections. Upon its release, controversy broke out over how chunks of the 54-minute interview were edited out by the broadcaster, Prasar Bharati, at the behest of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB).

AS Dulat: From RA&W Chief to Pakistan’s lackey

It is one of the biggest misfortunes of independent India that a person like AS Dulat served as the chief of India’s foreign intelligence agency, RA&W. Dulat is among the prominent signatories of the ‘Aman ki Asha’ letter addressed to Indian and Pakistan Prime Ministers.

From walking alongside Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during the infamous ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ back in 2023, AS Dulat regularly expresses his disdain for the ruling dispensation.

During his time in RA&W, Dulat held a soft outlook towards Islamic terrorists, which helped dreaded terrorists and Hizbul Mujahideen Chief Syed Salahuddin’s son get a medical seat in Srinagar. 

He also whitewashed the genocide and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley, stating that the popular perception of the migration of Kashmiri Hindus ‘differed from reality’.

After the Balakot airstrikes in 2019, AS Dulat, like his friends in the Congress, blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government for “milking” the situation rather than applauding the government for taking stringent action against terrorists coming from Pakistan.

In 2015, Dulat fuelled the Congress propaganda on the Kandahar hijacking of IC-814 in 1999, which led to the release of three terrorists, including JeM chief Masood Azhar, alleging that it was a “goof up” on India’s part not to have immobilised the aeroplane when it was grounded in Amritsar.

Predictably, AS Dulat also harbours limerence for Pakistan. He once heaped praises on Pakistan’s secret intelligence agency ISI, extolling it to be the world’s best intelligence agency. Such is Dulat’s bonhomie with Pakistan’s ISI, the same body that orchestrates jihadi attacks against India, co-authored a book with former Pakistan ISI chief Asad Durrani.

Humayun Kabir: Hateful Islamist, who laid the foundation of Babri Masjid in Bengal, wants India-Pakistan reconciliation

During Operation Sindoor, a Pakistani senator had boasted from the floor of the House that “the day is not afar when Pakistan’s Sipah Salaar, Asim Munir, will be Azan from Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid after destroying Ram Mandir”.

Pakistan found a supporter across the border in a notorious Islamist and Hinduphobe, Humayun Kabir, the Janata Unnayan Party (JUP) leader. Earlier this year, Kabir laid the foundation of a mosque modelled on the ‘Babri Masjid’ in Beldanga, Murshidabad. 

Humayun Kabir had made several hate speeches against Hindus on various occasions.

Saifuddin Soz: The Congress leader who wanted ‘independence’ of Kashmir

Saifuddin Soz is a veteran Congress leader and former union minister. Soz’s signature on a letter advocating for the Musharraf-Manmohan framework on J&K is not surprising. Back in 2018, Saifuddin Soz had said that former Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf was right in assessing that, given a choice, Kashmiris would want to be independent.

In his book Kashmir: Glimpses of History and the Story of Struggle, Soz advocated that the Modi government should open dialogue with the separatist Hurriyat Conference before moving to mainstream parties to find a solution to the Kashmir issue.

Soz has been an old supporter of the so-called “Musharraf-Vajpayee-Manmohan formula”

Earlier, Saifuddin Soz had said that Islamic terrorist Burhan Wani should have been kept alive for talks and that India, not Pakistan, is responsible for problems plaguing J&K.

Amusingly, Soz was also among the many Kashmiri leaders who threatened to protest if Article 35A was abrogated. The provision was relegated to the dustbin by the Modi government nevertheless, and Soz was left to cope and seethe.

RJD MP Manoj Jha: Once denied permission to attend event in Pakistan, now batting for pro-Pakistan Aman ki Asha

RJD MP Manoj Jha, a vocal critic of the Modi government, has also endorsed the letter/appeal issued by the CPP. Manoj Jha’s love for Pakistan is not new. Back in 2022, Jha sought permission from the Ministry of External Affairs to attend a conference by the Asma Jahangir Foundation in Pakistan. Jha had expressed profound disappointment over being denied permission to attend the event.

John Dayal: The Christian bigot and urban naxal

John Dayal, a signatory to the peace appeal, is a notorious bigot and urban Naxal. He served as a member of the National Advisory Council (NAC) formed in the UPA era to ‘advise’ then PM Manmohan Singh. Chaired by Sonia Gandhi, this body drafted the draconian Communal Violence Bill, which assumed that only religious or linguistic minorities and people from the Scheduled Castes and Tribes could be the victims of communal violence, essentially making upper-caste Hindus rioters even in riots or crimes committed by non-Hindus or those from reserved categories.

John Dayal also has a record of batting for Rohingya illegals in India. He is reported to have served as the secretary general of the All India Christian Council and a past president of the All India Catholic Union.

Mani Shankar Aiyar: The man loved in Pakistan loathed in India

Congress motormouth Mani Shankar Aiyar’s signature on the CPP ‘peace and talks’ appeal the ultimate signal that the letter deserves to be consigned to a dustbin. Mani Shankar Aiyar’s love for Pakistan is widely known.

He had earlier this year whitewashed Pakistan’s role in the Pahalgam Islamic terror attack wherein  26 innocent civilians, mainly Hindus, were killed by LeT-linked Jihadis for their faith.

“None of the 33 countries that Shashi Tharoor and his team visited held Pakistan responsible for the Pahalgam terror attack. The United Nations and the United States also did not hold Pakistan responsible,” Aiyar claimed.

In 2024, Aiyar attended the 8th Faiz Festival in Pakistan’s Lahore, and blamed ‘Hindutva’ for not holding talks with Pakistan. Aiyar justified Pakistani acts of terrorism, arguing that they “overreact” to the response from the Indian side.

Not to forget, Mani Shankar Aiyar sought help from Pakistan to remove PM Modi so that India-Pakistan talks could progress. 

Was one ethanol factory really behind Byrnihat’s pollution? The timeline says no

Dhruv Mishra
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Was one ethanol factory really behind Byrnihat’s pollution? The timeline says no

Byrnihat has been all over the news lately. This small industrial town sitting right on the Assam-Meghalaya border was named the world’s most polluted metro area, and that alone would be a big story. But it’s gotten a lot bigger recently because of a viral YouTube documentary by journalist Sarthak Goswami, called “Inside The World’s Most Polluted City.” In the video, Goswami travels through Byrnihat with a local translator, talks to residents, and shows thick black soot coating leaves, rooftops, and vegetables. He frames much of the blame around one specific factory – an ethanol distillery.

The video has already surpassed a million views and has sparked genuine outrage, protests, and pointed questions directed at the state government. All of the outrage is understandable. The pollution in Byrnihat is not exaggerated. People really are getting sick, the air really is bad, and residents really have been living with this for years. But when you actually lay out the timeline of events, the specific claim that one ethanol factory is responsible for Byrnihat becoming the world’s most polluted city just doesn’t hold together.

The dates that don’t add up

First, let’s get straight to the timeline: the factory at the centre of all this is Umiam Distillation Pvt. Ltd., a grain-based ethanol distillery located in the Export Promotion Industrial Park (EPIP) in Byrnihat, Ri-Bhoi district. According to the report, the plant officially began commercial ethanol production in September 2024. Now compare that against when Byrnihat’s pollution problem was first flagged. The Central Pollution Control Board identified Byrnihat as critically polluted back in 2022-23. Basically, two years before the ethanol plant even opened its doors.

And the report that really put Byrnihat on the global map. According to the 2024 IQAir World Air Quality Report, it recorded an annual average of PM2.5 concentration of 128.2 micrograms per cubic metre (over 25 times higher than the WHO’s safety guideline of 5 micrograms per cubic metre). It was published in March 2024. That’s a full six months before the ethanol plant started running. So think about what that actually means.

A factory that hadn’t even opened yet cannot be responsible for a pollution crisis that regulators had already documented, and a global report had already publicised, before it existed. This isn’t a matter of opinion or interpretation; it’s simply a matter of dates lining up or not lining up, and in this case, they don’t.

The coal ash precedent nobody’s talking about

This isn’t the first time Byrnihat has dealt with a thick layer of industrial residue settling over the town every morning. Long before the ethanol plant became the story, Byrnihat’s industrial belt was dominated by coal-based coke ovens and ferro-alloy furnaces, the kind of units that produce exactly the sooty, ash-like layer the documentary shows coating leaves and rooftops today. The Central Pollution Control Board actually listed the Byrnihat Industrial Area as a “Critically Polluted Area” as far back as 2018, at a time when the zone housed 34 small, medium, and large factories, most of them producing coke (a coal-based fuel) and cement.

According to the residents in the area, they have long described mornings where ash and black dust had visibly settled on everything overnight on the vehicles, plants, rooftops, and laundry left out to dry. That’s the same visual signature the recent documentary presents as if it were new, when in fact it echoes a pollution pattern that predated the ethanol plant by years and was driven by coal combustion, not distillation.

The state eventually acted on this. In September 2024, the Meghalaya State Pollution Control Board issued closure notices to six industrial units in Byrnihat for failing to comply with emission norms – Shillong ISPAT and Rolling Mill, Shyam Century Ferrous Limited, Nalari Ferro Alloys, Jaintia Ferro Alloys, Maithan Alloys, and Khasi Alloys. All come under coal-dependent coke or ferro-alloy operations.

Separately, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma told the state assembly in March 2025 that the government had shut down seven industries in the area for flouting pollution norms. These were the kind of units that would have been producing the coal-ash layer residents describe, and several of them were no longer operational by the time the ethanol plant even started up in September 2024.

If a documentary is showing black residue on surfaces in Byrnihat now, the more consistent explanation, given the town’s own regulatory history, is the decades of coal-based coke and ferro-alloy operations, not a distillery that came later and, per the MSPCB’s own June 2026 inspection, is currently within its emission limits.

Byrnihat has never been a one-factory town

The documentary tries to portray that one single factory of ethanol is the real cause of pollution. Part of what makes the single-factory narrative so appealing is that it’s simple. One villain, one smoking gun, one clean story. But Byrnihat’s industrial landscape is nowhere near that simple. According to Sarthak Goswami ‘s own documentary, his translator suggests that there are somewhere around 80 factories operating in and around the town – cement plants, limestone processing units, ferro-alloy factories, steel plants, and at least three separate liquor and distillery operations, not just the one that’s gone viral.

On top of that, Byrnihat sits in a bowl-shaped valley, a geographic feature that traps emissions instead of letting them disperse into the atmosphere. That means smoke and particulate matter from any of these dozens of sources tend to just sit over the town rather than blow away, building up day after day. Add heavy truck and vehicle traffic constantly passing through the area, since Byrnihat functions as a manufacturing and transport hub for the wider Northeast region, and you get a pollution problem with many contributing causes layered on top of each other, not one single source.

Even Meghalaya’s own Health Minister, Wailadmiki Shylla, has acknowledged this complexity publicly. He’s pointed out that a majority of the factories believed to be contributing to Byrnihat’s pollution are actually located on the Assam side of the border, not the Meghalaya side, and that pinning down exactly which state or which factory is responsible for how much pollution is genuinely difficult, given the town’s location straddling two states.

What happened when officials actually went and checked

After the documentary went viral and public pressure mounted, the Meghalaya State Pollution Control Board didn’t wait around. On June 29, 2026, they sent a task force to inspect the Umiam Distillation plant directly, acting on their own initiative rather than waiting for a formal complaint to be filed. Their findings were made public on July 1, 2026. The inspection covered several things: particulate matter levels, stack velocity, differential pressure, and temperature at the emission source.

According to the Board, particulate matter levels recorded during the inspection were well within the limits permitted under the unit’s Consent to Operate. They also found that the plant’s pollution-control infrastructure was functioning as intended, including an Electrostatic Precipitator installed for the plant’s captive power unit, and a Multi-Effect Evaporator paired with a Zero Liquid Discharge system for the distillery itself. According to the officials, samples of raw and treated effluent were sent for lab testing and confirmed that treated wastewater was being recycled back into the plant’s cooling tower rather than being discharged into the environment.

None of this means Byrnihat’s air is safe, and the Pollution Control Board isn’t claiming that either. Byrnihat remains officially classified as a “non-attainment” town under the National Clean Air Programme. It means it continues to fail national air quality standards, and it stays under continuous monitoring as a result. Multiple other industrial units have actually been shut down over the past two years for violating pollution norms. But specifically regarding this one ethanol plant, when regulators went and tested it against its own legal standards, they didn’t find a violation.

The human cost is real, even if the single-villain story isn’t accurate.

None of the timeline math or inspection results erases what Goswami’s documentary actually captured. The visuals are genuinely disturbing – thick black dust settling on crops and rooftops, residents saying they have to wash vegetables multiple times before they’re safe to cook, families describing rising cases of asthma, skin disease, and breathing problems.

According to the Government data cited alongside the documentary’s release, respiratory disease cases in the region are climbing from 2,082 in 2022 to 3,681 in 2024, an increase of nearly 77 per cent in just two years. That is a real and serious public health emergency, and it absolutely deserves the national attention it’s getting. The issue isn’t whether Byrnihat has a pollution crisis. It clearly does. The issue is how that crisis gets explained to the public. Framing it as the fault of one ethanol factory makes for a tighter, more shareable story, and it gives people a clear target to be angry at. But it also lets the other roughly 79 factories, the unregulated vehicle traffic, the weak enforcement across two state jurisdictions, and years of accumulated industrial growth completely off the hook.

If the public conversation stays focused on one plant that opened after the crisis was already documented, it becomes much easier for everyone else contributing to the problem to stay out of the spotlight. There’s also a broader irony worth mentioning here. Ethanol-blended fuel is being pushed heavily by the central government as a cleaner, greener alternative to fossil fuels, with officials like Union Minister Nitin Gadkari promoting it as safe, low-emission, and good for farmers.

Critics of the documentary’s framing have pointed out that the real story in Byrnihat isn’t really about ethanol production being inherently dirty — it’s about a broader failure to regulate industrial growth properly in a town that was already ecologically vulnerable long before any ethanol plant showed up.

Conclusion

Byrnihat was already flagged as critically polluted by the CPCB in 2022-2023. It was ranked the world’s most polluted metropolitan area in a report published in March 2024. The ethanol factory that’s currently being blamed only began commercial operations in September 2024, after both of those milestones had already happened.

A government inspection carried out in June 2026 found the plant operating within its permitted emission limits, with working pollution-control equipment. And there are roughly 80 factories operating in and around Byrnihat altogether, spanning cement, steel, ferro-alloys, and multiple distilleries, not just one. Byrnihat’s air is genuinely dangerous, and the people living there deserve real answers and real accountability. But based on the actual timeline and the evidence available, the claim that a single ethanol factory is responsible for turning Byrnihat into the world’s most polluted city simply doesn’t add up.

38 parasites in the brain? How the BBC used a 19-year-old parasite case to defame India and promote negative stereotypes

Shriti Sagar
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38 parasites in the brain? How the BBC used a 19-year-old parasite case to defame India and promote negative stereotypes

A 42-year-old woman from Wales has claimed that a trip to India nearly two decades ago changed her life after she allegedly developed a rare parasitic brain infection. The story has recently gained international attention after the BBC reported her account, despite the events dating back to 2007.

Lowri Denman, who now lives in the UK, shared her experience with the BBC, saying that a three-month visit to India in 2007 allegedly led to an infection that eventually left her with a metre-long tapeworm and 38 parasites in her brain.

According to her account, the illness took years to diagnose and resulted in severe headaches, seizures and other neurological complications. The renewed coverage of a nearly two-decade-old case has, however, also triggered debate online, with many questioning the timing of the reports and their impact on India’s image.

What is Neurocysticercosis and how it spreads

The condition at the centre of Denman’s story is neurocysticercosis (NCC), a disease caused by the larval stage of the pork tapeworm (Taenia solium). Medical experts have repeatedly clarified that the disease is often misunderstood. Contrary to popular belief, neurocysticercosis is not acquired simply by eating pork. Instead, it occurs when a person accidentally ingests microscopic tapeworm eggs through food or water contaminated with human faeces or through poor hygiene practices.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), humans develop an intestinal tapeworm infection, known as taeniasis, after consuming raw or undercooked infected pork. However, the more serious condition, cysticercosis, develops when tapeworm eggs enter the body through the faecal-oral route. The larvae can then travel through the bloodstream and lodge in different organs, including muscles, eyes and the central nervous system. When these cysts form inside the brain, the condition is known as neurocysticercosis.

Doctors describe neurocysticercosis as the most common parasitic infection of the central nervous system worldwide. Symptoms vary depending on where the parasites settle but commonly include severe headaches, seizures, epilepsy, cognitive problems, visual impairment and, in some cases, psychiatric symptoms. The disease is considered the leading preventable cause of epilepsy globally and is estimated to account for nearly 30% of epilepsy cases in countries where the parasite is endemic. Diagnosis usually requires brain imaging such as CT or MRI scans along with laboratory tests, while treatment generally involves anti-parasitic medicines, steroids and seizure-control medication.

Importantly, Denman herself stated that she deliberately avoided eating meat during her India trip. Medical experts quoted in reports suggested that if her diagnosis is correct, the infection would have resulted from accidentally ingesting microscopic tapeworm eggs through contaminated food or water rather than from knowingly eating pork.

What Lowri Denman claimed happened

Speaking to the BBC, Denman recalled that the first sign of something being seriously wrong came in 2010, three years after her India trip, when she discovered what she described as a metre-long tapeworm after using a restaurant toilet.

“It looked absolutely disgusting, like Sellotape with little ridges in it,” she said.

Although stool tests came back normal, her health deteriorated over the following year. She began suffering severe headaches and later experienced her first seizure in 2011.

“I was really starting to struggle getting some words out,” she recalled. “The next thing I came around and I was in an ambulance.”

Brain scans later revealed what doctors initially believed could be another infection. Denman said the doctor eventually told her, “We’ve found 38 parasites on your brain.”

“My mum and I were just jaws on the floor like, ‘what on earth, what is that?'” she said.

According to the report, her mother questioned whether the parasites could be linked to the tapeworm Denman had discovered a year earlier. Further investigations reportedly led doctors to diagnose neurocysticercosis. Denman spent two weeks in hospital and underwent treatment with anti-parasitic drugs and steroids. She later enjoyed several healthy years before suffering another medical setback when scans revealed significant swelling around the remaining parasites in her brain.

Why a 19-year-old story is being reported now

The renewed publication of Denman’s account has sparked criticism on social media that a medical case linked to a trip made in 2007 is being widely promoted in 2026.

Publishing a nearly two-decade-old case appears to reflect the anti-India BBC’s intention to create the impression that such infections are uniquely associated with present-day India, even though neurocysticercosis is a recognised parasitic disease found across several developing regions in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The infection described in the BBC report is linked to hygiene and contamination rather than simply travelling to or eating food in India. 

Reviving the story after 19 years contributes to negative perceptions about India, especially when the reports receive wide international circulation.

Social media reactions turn into anti-India remarks

Following the publication of the BBC report, several users on social media posted comments targeting India and Indians as per the motive of the BBC, the British broadcaster with a history of furthering anti-India propaganda.

One user wrote, “Ban immigration from India ASAP,” while sharing the BBC article. Another commented, “Would go anywhere in Africa before I ever went to India.”

Some remarks became even more offensive. One post claimed, “India’s biggest export is parasites, either shaped like humans or worms; they’re all bioweapons.”

Another user mocked Indians by writing, “It’s amazing that 38 Indians actually fit into her brain.”

These highly volatile reactions demonstrate how dated medical anomalies can be easily manipulated by media outlets to feed pre-existing biases, turning a personal healthcare crisis into a tool for geopolitical defamation.

A report to spread hate against India 

The renewed attention has also drawn scrutiny over the reporting itself. The BBC article centres on events that began with a trip in 2007, raising questions about why the case has been prominently highlighted nearly 19 years later.

The author of the article, Journalist Nicola Bryan, has reported versions of the same story across multiple publications over the past week, with differing descriptions of Denman’s location in some reports.

In one version, the woman is from Wales, in another from Scotland, and in another from England. These variations, combined with the revival of an old medical case, have fuelled speculation online that the story is being amplified in a way that reinforces negative narratives about India. 

The reports themselves also acknowledge that Denman had avoided meat during her India trip. According to the BBC article, doctors believed she may have inadvertently ingested microscopic tapeworm eggs through contaminated food or water, rather than because she knowingly consumed pork. Her first seizure occurred about three years after her 2007 trip to India. Given this timeline, it is difficult to conclude solely that the infection was definitively acquired during her visit to India. 

The manner in which the BBC has revived and amplified a nearly two-decade-old medical case also fits into a broader pattern in which sections of the Western media disproportionately highlight stories that reinforce stereotypes about India. While diseases such as neurocysticercosis are recognised by the World Health Organisation as a public health issue across multiple countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the report’s framing risks creating the impression that such infections are uniquely associated with India. Such selective editorial choices often end up fuelling prejudice rather than informing readers about the actual epidemiology of the disease.

The resulting online reaction illustrates how quickly such reporting can morph into casual racism against Indians. The social media responses following the BBC article included calls to ban Indian immigration and dehumanising remarks comparing Indians to parasites.

This echoes previous instances in which Western media coverage of India has relied on caricatures and stereotypes. One of the most widely criticised examples was a 2014 cartoon published by The New York Times after the Mars Orbiter Mission successfully entered Mars orbit. The cartoon depicted a turbaned Indian with a cow knocking on the door of an elite space club, a portrayal that was patronising and rooted in colonial stereotypes. It is such reportages and portrayals that contribute to normalising casual racism against India under the guise of commentary.

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