Politics
Indian police briefly detain Rahul Gandhi during protest march
- Police block opposition protest to ECI.
- MPs stage sit-in protest on road.
- Priyanka Gandhi also arrested.
Indian Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders were briefly detained by New Delhi Police during their protest march against the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) office over “voter fraud” allegations, Indian media reported.
Apart from Rahul and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the New Delhi Police detained several opposition members of parliament (MPs).
“This fight is not political […] it is to save the Constitution. The fight is for ‘one person, one vote,'” NDTV reported Rahul as saying while being shifted by the police.
Confirming the opposition leaders’ detention, Joint Commissioner of Police Deepak Purohit said that the politicians had been taken to a nearby police station.
The police officer, citing reasons behind their detention, said that the opposition lacked the necessary permission to hold a protest of such scale and that only 30 MPs were allowed to march towards the ECI office and lodge a complaint.
Purohit’s remarks come after the INC-led Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) commenced a march towards the ECI office.
Later, the opposition’s lawmakers, including Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition (LoP) Rahul and Congress MP Priyanka, returned to the parliament after their release to protest against alleged “vote theft”.
The credibility of elections has rarely been questioned in recent decades in the world’s most populous democracy.
Some analysts say the opposition accusations could damage Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he navigates one of the toughest periods of his 11 years in office.
Around 300 opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi of the main opposition Congress party, marched from parliament to the office of the independent election panel but were stopped by police some distance away.
The protesters shouted slogans against the panel and Modi’s government, saying elections were being “stolen”, and tried to push past barricades before being detained and taken away in buses.
“This fight is not political. This fight is to save the constitution,” Gandhi told reporters. “We want a clean, pure voters’ list.”
Gandhi and Congress have alleged that voters’ lists in states where the party lost are corrupted, with voters’ names deleted or included more than once to rig elections in favour of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Opposition parties have also criticised the election panel’s decision to revise the voters’ list in the key northern state of Bihar just before state elections due later this year, saying it aims to disenfranchise large numbers of poor voters.
The BJP and the Election Commission have rejected the accusations.
‘State of bankruptcy’
The commission has said that changes in voters’ lists are shared with political parties and all complaints are investigated thoroughly. It has also said that voters’ lists need to be revised to remove dead voters or those who have relocated to other parts of the country, among others.
Congress and its allies have fared poorly in two state elections that they had expected to win after an impressive show in last year’s parliamentary vote, which saw BJP losing its outright majority and remaining in power only with the help of regional parties.
Congress has also complained about electronic voting machines and said the counting process is not fair, charges rejected by the election panel.
The BJP said opposition parties were trying to create a “state of anarchy” by sowing seeds of doubt about the electoral process.
“They are in a state of bankruptcy because of their continuous losses,” federal minister Dharmendra Pradhan told reporters on Monday.
- Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter jet crashes during training.
- Jet went missing after taking off from Jorhat airbase.
- Dead pilots identified as Sq Ldr Anuj, Flight Lieutenant Duragkar.
Two pilots from the Indian Air Force (IAF) were killed after a Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter jet crashed in India’s northeastern state of Assam, NDTV reported, citing officials.
The Indian Air Force said on Friday that a fighter jet, which was on a training mission, crashed in the northeast Indian state of Assam.
“The Su-30MKI, which was on a training mission, crashed in the area of Karbi Anglong, Assam, approx 60 km from Jorhat,” the Indian Air Force said on X.
The aircraft had gone missing shortly after taking off from the Jorhat airbase. Communication with the Russian-origin fighter jet was lost at 7:42pm, according to officials.
The crash occurred in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district, around 60 kilometres from the airbase. The aircraft reportedly went down in a remote hilly area.
The IAF identified the deceased pilots as Squadron Leader Anuj and Flight Lieutenant Purvesh Duragkar.
“All personnel of the IAF express sincere condolences, and stand firmly with the bereaved family in this time of grief,” the Air Force said in a post on X.
Local residents in the area said they heard a loud explosion from a nearby hill and saw a ball of fire shortly afterwards.
India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said he was “deeply saddened” by the loss of the two pilots in the “tragic” crash.
The Sukhoi Su-30MKI is a two-seater, long-range fighter aircraft developed by Russian manufacturer Sukhoi. It is produced under licence in India by state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) for the IAF.
The aircraft was first inducted into the Indian Air Force in 1997, and the service currently operates a fleet of more than 260 Su-30MKI jets.
Similar incidents have occurred in recent years. A Sukhoi fighter jet crashed in Nashik, Maharashtra, in June 2024, while another Su-30 aircraft crashed in January 2023 shortly after taking off from the Gwalior airbase in Madhya Pradesh.
TEHRAN: The head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, has said that recent US-Israeli airstrikes on Iran have damaged more than 3,000 civilian properties, according to reports cited by Al Jazeera.
Kolivand stated that the strikes affected 3,643 civilian locations, including 3,090 residential homes, highlighting the significant impact on populated urban areas.
Civilian Infrastructure Hit
According to the Red Crescent chief, the attacks also caused damage to several public and service facilities, including:
528 commercial and service centres
14 healthcare and pharmaceutical facilities
9 Red Crescent sites
Officials said the majority of the destruction occurred in densely populated residential areas, raising humanitarian concerns.
Growing Humanitarian Impact
The latest figures underscore the expanding civilian toll as the conflict involving Iran, the United States, and Israel continues to intensify.
Emergency teams from the Iranian Red Crescent are currently involved in rescue, relief and medical operations in affected areas.
Authorities have not yet released updated casualty figures but say humanitarian agencies are continuing to assess the full extent of the damage.
- Hegseth acknowledges US military was investigating incident.
- Press Secy Leavitt says Iran continues to targets civilians, children.
- Rubio says US would not deliberately target a school.
US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed scores of children on Saturday but have not yet reached a final conclusion or completed their investigation, two US officials told Reuters.
Reuters was unable to determine more details about the investigation, including what evidence contributed to the tentative assessment, what type of munition was used, who was responsible or why the US might have struck the school.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday acknowledged the US military was investigating the incident.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, did not rule out the possibility that new evidence could emerge that absolves the US of responsibility and points to another responsible party in the incident.
Reuters could not determine how much longer the investigation would last or what evidence US investigators are seeking before the assessment can be completed.
The White House did not directly comment on the investigation, but press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Reuters, “While the Department of War is currently investigating this matter, the Iranian regime targets civilians and children, not the United States of America.”
Asked about the incident during a news briefing on Wednesday, Hegseth said: “We’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets. But we’re taking a look and investigating that.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that the United States would not deliberately target a school.
“The Department of War would be investigating that if that was our strike, and I would refer your question to them,” Rubio said.
Israeli and US forces have until now divided their attacks in Iran both geographically and by target type, a senior Israeli official and a source with direct knowledge of the joint planning said. While Israel was striking missile launch sites in western Iran, the United States was attacking such targets, as well as naval ones, in the south.
The UN human rights office, without saying who it believed was responsible for the strike on the school, called on Tuesday for an investigation.
“The onus is on the forces that carried out the attack to investigate it,” UN human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a press briefing in Geneva.
Images of the girls’ funeral on Tuesday were shown on Iranian state television. Their small coffins were draped with Iranian flags and passed from a truck across a large crowd towards the grave site.
Deliberately attacking a school, hospital, or any other civilian structure would likely be a war crime under international humanitarian law.
If a US role were to be confirmed, the strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the Middle East.
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