DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE SATURDAY, JUNE 7, 2025, AHMEDABAD, LATE CITY, 18 PAGES `6.00 ● WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 Respecting Every Grain, Rewarding Every Effort 01101/13/0009/2526 With a historic rise, MSP now 150% of the cost ₹18 lakh crore given to farmers for wheat and paddy procurement at MSP in the last decade; 3 times compared to 2004-2014 First thaw in chill: Canada’s Carney calls PM, invites him to G7 Summit Look forward to our meeting, will work together with renewed vigour: Modi SHUBHAJIT ROY Carney’s call comes days before start of summit on June 15 NEW DELHI, JUNE 6 INAdiplomaticoutreachtowards mendingbilateraltiesafterayearand-half of acrimony and hostility, Canadian Prime Minister MarkCarneyFridayinvitedPrime MinisterNarendraModitotheG7 Summit on June 15-17. Following a phone call from Carney,Modi,inapostonX,said, “GladtoreceiveacallfromPrime Minister Mark J Carney of Canada. Congratulated him on his recent election victory and thankedhimfortheinvitationto the G7 Summit in Kananaskis later this month.” “As vibrant democracies bound by deep people-to-people ties, India and Canada will work together with renewed vigour,guidedbymutualrespect and shared interests. Look forward to our meeting at the Summit,” he said. Carney said, “I spoke with @NarendraModi today on the longstanding relationship between Canada and India, includ- A Vande Bharat train crosses the newly inaugurated Chenab rail bridge in J&K’s Reasi district, Friday. This is the first rail link between the Valley and Jammu region. PTI Opening key rail bridge to Valley, PM targets Pak: Pahalgam terror was also attack on J&K livelihood Chenab bridge is all-weather link from Udhampur to Baramulla Srinagar QazigundBaramulla (118 km) Baramulla Qazigund BanihalQazigund (18 km) Banihal Katra-Banihal (111 km) CHENAB BRIDGE ShriMataVaishno DeviKatra Udhampur -Katra (25 km) Udhampur E Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the Tricolour on the Chenab bridge in Reasi district, Friday. PTI PAGE 10 as the country’s first cablestayed bridge of the Indian Railways over Anji Khad. The 272-km Udhampur-SrinagarBaramulla railway link (USBRL) Projectisdesignedtoprovideallweatherconnectivitybyeventually linking the Kashmir Valley CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Bengaluru stampede: RCB head of marketing among 4 arrested, CM’s political secretary sacked KIRAN PARASHAR BENGALURU, JUNE 6 TWO DAYS after the stampede in Bengaluru which left 11 people dead, police on Friday arrested four people, including the marketing head of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) and the vice-president of the event management firm, DNA. The Karnataka government also removed Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s political secretaryKGovindarajufromhispost, and replaced the Additional DirectorGeneralof Police(ADGP) of state intelligence, Hemant M Nimbalkar. On Thursday, the Chief Minister had ordered the suspension of senior police offi- EXPLAINED KATRA, JUNE 6 GOVT & POLITICS PAK WRITES AGAIN, OFFERS TO RENEW IWT TALKS; INDIA NOT READY YET RCB marketing and revenue head Nikhil Sosale (in black) being taken to court after his arrest in Bengaluru, Friday. PTI cers, including City Police Commissioner B Dayananda. The stampede took place Wednesday afternoon when lakhs of people gathered to celebrate the RCB winning the IPL. A day later, police registered a case CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 TRUMP-MUSK RELATIONSHIP FLAMES OUT PUBLICLY PAGE 15 STARLINK GETS SATCOM LICENCE FROM INDIA PAGE 16 NEW DELHI, JUNE 6 “INTHEbeginning,therewereno roads. We would go by foot, on mules and ponies, perch ourselves on a ledge and even camp on cliffs at night as we surveyed how we could build roads to move the equipment to the bridgesite.Iknew the Sahyadris. I was just a boy from Mysore and ● hereIwas,highon the Himalayas, so very different, terrifyingly high and so very alien.” The “boy from Mysore” is LPrakashwho,asChief Engineer of the Konkan Railways’ Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla RailLink(USBRL)project,wasresponsible for laying the roads. Now an Executive Director, he recalled the early days when INSIDE PAGES 13, 14 Konkan Rly CMD S K Jha; (right) its ED L Prakash BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE VADODARA, JUNE 6 Gujarat Congress Gen Secy arrested over social media post on Op Sindoor AHMEDABAD, JUNE 6 THE GUJARAT Pradesh Congress Committee General Secretary, Rajesh Soni, was on Friday arrested by the Gujarat Police Cyber Crime Cell over an alleged objectionable social media post on Operation Sindoor, officials said even as GPCC president Shaktisinh Gohil criticised the move. According to police officials, Soniallegedlymadedisparaging statements about the Armed Forces in his post. Cyber Crime Cell Superintendent of Police Dharmendra Sharma told The IndianExpress,“Soniwasbooked under BNS Sections 152 (endangeringthesovereignty,unityand integrityof India)and353(mak- Rajesh Soni ing, publishing or circulating statements that could lead to public mischief) for demoralising the army.” SP Sharma confirmed that earlier in the day, Soni was detained from his home in Ahmedabad and subsequently placed under arrest. He was produced before court, which then sent him to judicial custody. Demanding ‘immediate bail’ from Chief Minister Bhupendra Murder story ‘fabricated’: In a first, Gujarat special court formed under Disabilities Act acquits man Special officers for sign language were appointed to assist the court CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 INSIDE RINKU GHOSH ARUN SHARMA ACCUSING PAKISTAN of attacking“insaaniyatandKashmiriyat” bytargetingtouristsinPahalgam, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Friday that the intention of theattackwas“toengineercommunalclashesacrossthecountry anddeprivepeopleof Kashmirof their livelihood”. Modi was speaking after he flagged off two Vande Bharat trains between Katra and Srinagar and inaugurated the world’s highest railway arch bridge over the Chenab as well How it was done: ‘For 12 years, we ate, lived, breathed the Chenab’ ing deep people-to-people ties andsignificantcommerciallinks. Importantly, we agreed to continued law enforcement dialogue and discussions addressing security concerns.” The invitation, less than 10 days before the Summit, is a major breakthrough after the chill in ties. The two countries downgraded diplomatic ties after Justin Trudeau, the then Canadian Prime Minister, set off a political storm in 2023 when he alleged “potential” involvement of Indian government agents in the killing of a Canadabased Khalistan separatist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar. India rejected the charges as “absurd” and “motivated”. India has been invited to every G7 Summit since 2019. Patel for ‘social leader and political activist’ Rajeshbhai T Soni, GPCCpresidentShaktisinhGohil said, “Last night, just like a terroristisbeingcaught,Rajeshbhai T Soni was arrested by Gandhinagar Cyber Crime. If we look at the post, the only thing that is clear is that the soldiers of our brave army should get credit for the bravery they have shown and the money from the public treasury should not be used for publicity and … political gains should not be taken in the name of Operation Sindoor.” Soni had uploaded around three to four posts on social media platforms on Operation Sindoor. “This has been in the minds of all the citizens of the country thatthecreditforthebravework done by our army should go to CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 IN A first-of-its-kind trial in Gujarat by a special designated court under the Disabilities Act, 2016, a 35-year-old hearing and speech impaired accused was acquitted in connection with a 2023 murder case of a 40-yearold woman. Special officers for sign language and Tamil translations were appointed to assist the court in explaining the procedure to the accused. Acquitting the accused, Shivachandra Tamil, the court held that the prosecution case that the accused — a vagabond had allegedly murdered the victim after she refused to give in to hisadvances—wasa“fabricated and baseless” story. Aspertheprosecution’scase, the decomposed body of an unidentified woman was found near the railway track of Sabarmati Railway station on May 31, 2023. The Ahmedabad railway policepickeduptheaccusedonJune 2,2023andhisconfessionalstatementwasrecordedintheformof adiscoverypanchnamaof thealleged murder weapon, dug beside where he used to sleep. The prosecution sought to examine 18 witnesses to prove the case based on the charge that the accused had demanded a physical relation with the victim — also deaf and mute — on the night of the alleged crime and when the victim denied, the accused allegedlyattackedher,inflictedbrutalblowsonherabdomenwitha knife and killed her. Observing that the deposition of the sign language expert and mediator, Ashwin Vegda, taken on by the Ahmedabad Railway police to question the accused “was contradictory” to the claims made by the investigating officer in his testimony, thecourtorderstatedthat“itappears that in order to detect a crime in his jurisdiction, (the investigating officer) erected haphazard evidences against the accused.” Noting that the accused was not conversant with Gujarati language,inwhichthelegalprocedures had been initiated, the court order, delivered on June 6 stated, “The IO did not investigate if the interpreter Ashwin Vegda was conversant with Tamillanguage.Thereisnomention in the panchnama of what kind of questions did Vegda ask the accused while speaking to him in sign language as well as details of the sign language used by Vegda and the accused while replying to his questions... It is a fact that the IO did not question the accused on his own; he has placed on record that the accused was interrogated only through Vegda”. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Ahmedabad