Delhi | Pakistan

Hundreds of people led by the chief minister of India-occupied Kashmir (IoK) shouted slogans and staged a protest in the capital Delhi on Monday, demanding statehood for the region, seven years after it revoked the disputed region’s autonomy by abrogating Article 370. Protesters were stopped by police from staging their demonstration, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said in a post on X, which had videos and pictures of people holding posters and shouting slogans. “This is only the beginning of our struggle for statehood, our rights, our dignity and everything that was taken away from us,” Abdullah said in the post. In August 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked the partial autonomy of the occupied Kashmir state, removed its statehood and divided it into two federally controlled territories: held Kashmir with Jammu, and Ladakh. The government has since said statehood to the Himalayan region will be restored at the “appropriate time” but has not given a deadline. Abdullah and his party, the Jammu and Kashmir...

The Foreign Office (FO) on Wednesday condemned the awarding of a life imprisonment sentence to prominent Kashmiri leader Asiya Andrabi, as well as the 30-year prison sentences awarded to her associates Fehmeeda Sofi and Nahida Nasreen by a court in Delhi. Andrabi is the founder of a Kashmiri rights group called the Dukhtaran-i-Millat, or Daughters of the Nation. The court sentenced her, Fehmeeda and Nasreen under the Indian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) after government prosecutors alleged that Andrabi was involved in a conspiracy to carry out militant activities. In a statement posted to social media platform X, the FO said that the verdict constituted a “grave miscarriage of justice” and reflected the “continuing suppression of fundamental rights” in India-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. “Pakistan views this decision as part of a broader pattern of politically motivated prosecutions aimed at silencing dissenting voices and intimidating those advocating the legitimate rights of the Kashmiri people,...

Danish badminton player and world number three Anders Antonsen has announced his withdrawal from the India Open due to “extreme pollution” in New Delhi. “Many is [sic] curious as to why I have pulled out of the India Open for the third consecutive year,” the 28-year-old said on his Instagram stories early on Wednesday morning. “Due to the extreme pollution in Delhi at the moment, I don‘t think it’s a place to host a badminton tournament. “Crossing my fingers that it will be better in the summer when the World Championships will take place in Delhi,” Antonsen, who was seeded sixth in the tournament, added. He added that the Badminton World Federation had “once again” fined him $5,000 as a result of his withdrawal from the tournament. In another Instagram story, Antonsen posted a screenshot of air quality monitor IQAir, which showed Delhi’s AQI at 348, falling in the “hazardous” category, at 3:30am local time. Delhi and its neighbouring districts are prone to a thick smog every winter as cold, heavy air traps c...

Authorities in India’s capital Delhi rolled out strict measures on Wednesday in an attempt to curb pollution, including a ban on vehicles not compliant with latest emission control norms and regulating attendance in private and government offices. The air quality index in the Delhi region, home to 30 million people, has been in the “severe” category for the past few days, often crossing the 450-mark. In addition, shallow fog in parts of the city worsened visibility that affected flights and trains. This prompted the Commission for Air Quality Management to invoke stage four, the highest level, of the graded response action plan for Delhi and surrounding areas on Saturday. The curbs ban the entry of older diesel trucks into the city, suspend construction, including on public projects, and impose hybrid schooling. Schoolchildren walk through a field on a smoggy winter morning in New Delhi on December 17. —AFP Kapil Mishra, a minister in the local government, announced on Wednesday that all private and governmen...

Indian authorities claimed on Sunday that a deadly car blast in New Delhi earlier this week was an attack carried out by a “suicide bomber”, announcing the arrest of an accomplice. The National Investigation Agency (NIA), the country’s counter-terrorism body, said the attacker and the second suspect were both from India-occupied Kashmir, where police have carried out sweeping raids in recent days. Announcing “a breakthrough” in the investigation, the NIA said it had arrested Amir Rashid Ali, describing him as an accomplice of the “suicide bomber” under whose name “the car involved in the attack was registered”. He had come to Delhi to “facilitate the purchase of the car which was eventually used as a vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Device (IED) to trigger the blast”, the counter-terrorism agency said in a statement. It identified the car’s driver as Umarun Nabi, a resident of occupied Kashmir who was an assistant professor in general medicine at a university in the northern state of Haryana. The explosion ...

Multiple Indian accounts on social media platform X since Thursday shared an image of a Pakistani Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC), claiming it belonged to the wife of a primary suspect in the Nov 10 Delhi attack. However, the image does not show the CNIC of the suspect’s wife. A car explosion near Delhi’s iconic Red Fort rocked the national capital on Monday evening. Twelve people died in the incident. Investigators alleged that the explosion was executed by a terror cell linked to Jaish‑i‑Mohammed (JeM), operating through a cell based around Faridabad and Pulwama. On Thursday, an X user, who appears to be a pro-Indian based on his previous posts, shared an image of a Pakistani CNIC belonging to a woman. The post was captioned: “Big breaking: Her name is Afeera Bibi, she is a Pakistani citizen, and she is also the wife of Delhi blast terrorist Muhammad Umar. She works for Jaish-i-Mohammed and is also connected to Dr Shaheen, who used to recruit members for JeM in India! Pakistan should start counti...

Turkiye on Thursday refuted claims made by Indian media outlets claiming that Ankara had a link to the car blast in Delhi earlier this week. A day prior, the Indian government confirmed that it was treating a car blast that killed 12 people and wounded at least 20 others in Delhi as a “terror incident” and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice as swiftly as possible. In a statement, Turkiye’s Directorate of Communications rejected the allegations and displayed screenshots of social media posts by two Indian outlets, which claimed Ankara had a “role in radicalising sleeper cells against India, [the] Turkish government is providing logistical, diplomatic and financial help to all terrorist groups across the world”. “The deliberate reports in certain Indian media outlets … are part of a malicious disinformation campaign aimed at damaging bilateral relations between the two countries,” Ankara’s statement read. Turkiye rejected acts of terror “regardless of where or by whom they are committed” and noted its c...

India’s government confirmed on Wednesday that it was treating a car blast that killed 12 people and wounded at least 20 others in Delhi as a “terror incident” and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice as swiftly as possible. In a resolution adopted late on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet said: “The country has witnessed a heinous terror incident, perpetrated by anti-national forces, through a car explosion.“ “The Cabinet directs that the investigation into the incident be pursued with the utmost urgency and professionalism so that the perpetrators, their collaborators, and their sponsors are identified and brought to justice without delay.” Meanwhile, India’s anti-terrorism agency spearheaded the third day of investigations into the car blast. Police are yet to give exact details of what caused the intense explosion near the historic Red Fort in the crowded Old Delhi quarter of the city, one of India’s most well-known landmarks, and the site of the annual prime minister’s Independence ...

India trialled cloud seeding over its smog-filled capital for the first time, spraying a chemical from an aeroplane to encourage rain and wash deadly particles out of the air. Cloud seeding is the practice of using aeroplanes to fire salt or other chemicals into clouds to induce rain. New Delhi city authorities, working with the government’s Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, launched a test run on Thursday afternoon using a Cessna light aeroplane over the city’s northern Burari area. “A trial seeding flight was done … in which cloud seeding flares were fired”, Delhi Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said in a statement late on Thursday. “This flight was the proving flight for checking the capabilities for cloud seeding, the readiness and endurance of the aircraft, the capability assessment of the cloud seeding fitments and flares, and coordination among all involved agencies.” It comes ahead of a planned rollout of the scheme. Delhi’s Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said that “if conditions remain favourable, De...

Lahore’s air quality is expected to deteriorate sharply on Tuesday as smog drifts in from India’s capital, Delhi, which recorded a “hazardous” Air Quality Index (AQI) of 535 at 8:40 am, according to Swiss monitoring firm IQAir.

Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Wednesday expressed a lack of confidence in the 48-hour ceasefire agreed between Pakistan and Afghanistan, as the latter has become a “proxy of Delhi”. Today’s fighting was the third major skirmish between Pakistan and Afghanistan within a week, following the incident in Kurram last night and earlier skirmishes that began on Saturday night and continued into Sunday morning at several locations. Speaking on Geo News programme ‘Aaj Shahzeb Khanzada ke Saath’ on Wednesday night, the defence minister said that the Afghan Taliban are “fighting a proxy war” on behalf of India and stated that they have become a “stooge” for New Delhi. “I have my doubts that the ceasefire will hold, because the [Afghan] Taliban are being sponsored by Delhi,” he added. “Right now, Kabul is fighting a proxy war for Delhi.” Asif reaffirmed Pakistan’s readiness and capability to defend itself in the face of further aggression from Kabul. “We have the capability and we will attack them, God willing, if the...

Flooding across northern India killed at least five people on Wednesday, officials said, with more thunderstorms expected and local media reporting that 10,000 people have been evacuated from the river banks in capital Delhi. The monsoon season in India has been particularly intense this year, killing at least 130 people in August alone in north India, wiping out villages and destroying infrastructure. The latest round of flooding has hit northern areas of occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Punjab, where the Chenab and Tawi rivers have risen above the danger mark at several spots. The swollen rivers have triggered landslides and damaged many roads, disconnecting parts of the mountainous regions of Jammu and Himachal from the rest of India. At least five people were killed today after landslides battered Rajouri and Mandi districts in Jammu and Himachal Pradesh, respectively, officials said. The India Meteorological Department warned of heavy to very heavy rain in the region today, w...

India’s Supreme Court on Monday ordered the removal of tens of thousands of stray dogs from the capital, citing public safety concerns after a surge in dog bites. India is home to millions of stray dogs and deadly attacks, particularly on children and the elderly, are regularly reported by the city’s media. At least 60,000 stray dogs live on the streets of Delhi, according to India’s Livestock Census of 2012, the most recent data available. Some suggest that number to be now far higher, with large rival dog packs patrolling parks and residential neighbourhoods across the city. The country accounts for more than a third of global rabies deaths, according to the World Health Organisation, a crisis exacerbated by a lack of sterilisation programmes and legal restrictions on canine culling. The court asked city authorities to set up dog shelters within eight weeks, and maintain daily records of the canines captured. “What is important, and without which the entire exercise would go futile, not a single stray dog s...

NEW DELHI: A disastrous event was narrowly escaped when Air India Flight AI 315, arriving from Hong Kong, ignited upon landing at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport. The fire exploded in the aircraft’s Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) as passengers started to land at the gate. According to an official statement from Air India, the fire […]

Delhi planning military action in '24-36 hours'