The Editorial Page: US deal raises questions. PM must take a leaf out of Manmohan Singh’s book 8 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2026 JOURNALISM of COURAgE AHMEDABAD, LATE CITY, 20 PAGES ₹5.00 l www.indianexpress.com DA I LY F R O M : A H M E DA B A D , C H A N D I GA R H , D E L H I , J A I P U R , kO L k ATA , L U C k N O W , M U M B A I , N AG P U R , PAT N A , P U N E , VA D O DA R A happening today lMINISTRY OF STATISTICS and Programme Implementation will release the Consumer Price Index inflation data for January as per the new series at 4 pm. Secretary Saurabh Garg and Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran will later address the media. POLLING TODAY ROW IN LOK SABHA AFTER REMARKS BY LEADER OF OPPOSITION Rahul slams Govt over US deal; Great opportunities to work with India, Cong sold out at WTO, says FM says Tarique aide as Bangladesh votes ExPrEss lIN THE ICC T20 MEN’S World Cup, defending champions India face underdogs Namibia in their second Group A match in Delhi. ExPrEss IN interview DHAKA TRACK THESE AND MORE ON www.INDIANExPrEss.cOm Shubhajit Roy February 11 Business as Usual By EP UNNY Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and (right) Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman speak in Lok Sabha on Wednesday. PTI & ANI He is misleading House, will file privilege notice: Union Minister Rijiju Afteroutrageover shootingvideo, AssamBJPfires socialmediaman Sukrita Baruah Guwahati, February 11 ONE OF the four co-conveners ofAssamBJP’ssocialmediadepartment has been removed from his position after a video posted from the unit’s official X handle last week showed an image of Assam Chief Minister HimantaBiswaSarmaaiminga rifleattwomeninskullcaps,including one who resembles CongressMPGauravGogoi.The video prompted outrage from acrosstheOppositionspectrum and was deleted the next day. Confirming this to The Indian Express, Assam BJP president Dilip Saikia called the post by the co-convener an “immature” and “unauthorised” action. In August 2025, Saikia appointedfourpartyworkersascoconveners of the social media department, all of them men in their twenties and thirties. One ofthemhasnowbeenremoved. »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 ThE wOrlD pAGE 17 AT LEAST 9 DEAD IN SHOOTING AT HIGH ScHOOL IN cANADA Asad Rehman New Delhi, February 11 MOUNTING A sharp attack on the government, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi WednesdaytargetedthePrimeMinister over the India-US trade dealsayingitwasgoingtocompromise the country’s energy security and farm interests. ParticipatinginaHousediscussion on the Union Budget, Gandhiusedamartialarts“grip” and“chokehold”analogytotarget the government. “You are telling us that energy and fi- Sitharaman counters LoP on farmers, food security & data Deeptiman Tiwary New Delhi, February 11 nance are being weaponised, and then you are having it done to you; you are having it done to our farmers; you are having it done to our youngsters. You are handingoverourdata.Howcan you even make these statements?Howcanyouevencome to this House…,” he said. His remarks — some of whichwerenottakenonrecord following directions from Jagdambika Pal who was chairing the proceedings — drew an angry response from the treasury benches. »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 HOURS AFTER Leader of OppositionRahulGandhitargeted thegovernmentovertheIndiaUS trade deal, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while defending provisions of the Union Budget, hit back at the Congress, saying it was the UPAthathad“surrendered”India’s interests at the WTO and putfarmersandthefoodsecurity system at risk. Replying to the discussion in Lok Sabha on the Budget, Sitharaman said, “They are talking about selling India and In- PArlIAmENT p 14 Opp pArTIES SAY BUDGET ONLY fOr prIvILEGED dian farmers. That Modiji has surrendered.Modijiwillalways stand steadfast in the interest of the nation. I will tell you who sold the nation. In 2013, Congress signed a WTO agreement in Bali. There were two issues, trade facilitation and public stock holding of grains. Without securing India’s interest in public stockholding of grains, they signed the trade facilitation agreement.” She said this would have severely constrained procurement and the public distribution system. “This meant that no procurement could happen from any Indian farmer post 2017. And we couldn’t give anything to the poor through the ration shops,” she said. »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Buffoonery, smear campaign: Puri US revises its India hits out at Rahul’s Epstein remark trade deal fact sheet, drops ‘certain pulses’ AS BANGLADESH goes to polls Thursday under a heavy securityblanket,BNPhasemergedas the frontrunner to lead the country under Tarique Rahman, the son of party founder and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia. The Jamaat-e-Islami, which was banned and marginalised by the ousted PM Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League regime, is BNP’s main challenger. Rahman, who is BNP's prime ministerial candidate, returned to Bangladesh from the UK less than two months agotobewithhisailingmother Khaleda Zia who passed away on December 30, 2025. Now, on the eve of elections with 12.7 crore eligible voters, one of Rahman’s closest advisors, Mahdi Amin, told The Indian Express that if the »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 MAHDI AMIN BNP LEADER E. ExPlAINED Why Delhi is looking at Dhaka This will be Bangladesh’s first election after Sheikh Hasina was ousted as PM in August 2024. For a country that has since been governed by an unelected administration led by Muhammad Yunus, the polls will be a key test of its return to democracy. Given the strain in ties, Delhi will watch closely what happens in Dhaka. rELATED rEpOrTS, p 17 PM Museum to get replicas of Morarji’s Bharat Ratna and Nishan-e-Pakistan from Gujarat Vidyapith Jatin Anand New Delhi, February 11 HITTING BACK at Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi for mentioning his name in connection with the Epstein Files, Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri,whiledenyinganywrongdoing, dismissed the allegations as “baseless”, “buffoonery”, “innuendo” and a “smear campaign”. Addressing the press, Puri targeted Gandhi, “There are twokindsofleaders:Thosewho assume responsibility in the political system and then dedicate their lives to samaj sewa, transforming the country… those in whose lifetime the Changes India ‘commits’ to ‘intends’ in clause on purchase of $500-bn goods Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri at the BJP office in New Delhi. PTI country moves to being the third largest economy from the tenth largest… and then there are other leaders who, occa- sionally, come to the country.” “This is the same yuva leader who, a few months ago, »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Divya A New Delhi, February 11 A DAY after unilaterally releasing a fact sheet on the interim India-US trade agreement, mentioning “certain pulses” E. How US toned down pAGE 16 among American agricultural productsthatwillseetariffcuts by New Delhi, the White House has updated the document, removing those two words. Ithasalsomadeanotherkey change in a reference to the purchase of $500-billion worth of US products overall, changing “India commits” in this context to “India intends”. The original fact sheet had led to protests by Opposition »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 The Bharat Ratna (left) and the Nishan-e-Pakistan. BHUPENDRA RANA Leena Misra Ahmedabad, February 11 THE MAHATMA GandhifoundedGujaratVidyapithwill be sharing replicas of the highest civilian awards of India and Pakistan — the Bharat Ratna and the Nishan-e-Pakistan — awarded to the late Prime Minister Morarji Desai, with the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library (PMML) at the Teen Murti Bhavan, Delhi as part of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two institutions in 2024. »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 l DEATHS OF OvER 20 CHILDREN RESULT OF AN INTERCONNECTED CHAIN OF EvENTS — FROM SOURCING OF RAW MATERIALS TO MEDICAL USE: POLICE Behind MP syrup deaths: Bad batch, compromised system, a phone call Anand Mohan J eventuallydieofkidneyfailure. During the call, Dr Khapekar invoked a grim precedent A 281-SECOND telephone con- — the 1998 Gurgaon tragedy, versation connected two doc- where diethylene glycol (DEG) tors across state lines on Sep- contamination killed 33 tember 11, 2025. children. As children in Madhya PraAccording to the police desh’s tribal-domichargesheet, Dr PAGE 1 nated Chhindwara Khapekar“clearlyindistrictbeganfalling structed that the ill after consuming medicine being used contaminated cough syrup, Dr should be tested”, The Indian Praveen Soni, their consulting Express has learnt. The referdoctor, spoke to Dr Praveen ence to the 1998 incident Khapekar in Nagpur about the was “not merely to condition of Vedansh, a two- provide information, but to year-old child who would issue a warning”. Bhopal, February 11 anchor By then, 15 children had already died in Chhindwara. Thechargesheetfiledbythe Madhya Pradesh police reveals that the deaths of over 20 children were not the result of a single catastrophic error, but “the outcome of a continuous and interconnected chain of events, extending from sourcing of raw material to medical use”. A total of 11 persons have been named as accused, and a district and sessions court has takencognisanceofthechargesheet. The case is currently beingheardatthestageofargu- ferior-qualitypharmaceuticals, and how monthly gifts and incentives were used to lure doctorsinChhindwaratoprescribe the cough syrup. The manufacturer The children died after allegedly consuming Coldrif cough syrup. FILE ments on charges. At the centre of the police case is how the contaminated batch, SR-13, reached Chhindwara through a network of suppliers allegedly dealing in in- At the centre of this chain was batch SR-13 of Coldrif syrup,manufacturedbySresan Pharmaceuticals in Tamil Nadu and distributed through anetworkthatoperatedalmost exclusivelyinasingledistrictof Madhya Pradesh. Sresan Pharma had been in operation since 1984, giving it, asthechargesheetnotes,“long- standing experience in pharmaceutical manufacturing processes”. The unit produced various liquid oral pharmaceutical formulations under the supervision of G Ranganathan, who served as both the manufacturing chemist and the proprietor. Now the main accused in the case and currently under judicial custody, Ranganathan was previously booked on five occasions in 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2023 under various provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, investigators said. “In some of these matters, monetary penalty/fine was imposedbythecourt,”thechargesheet states. During the investigation, police discovered that the firm had allegedly received propylene glycol, a key ingredient in the syrup, “without a Certificate of Analysis”. “Proper bills/invoices relating to the purchase of raw material were not found to be consistently and uniformly maintained, and in some cases, payments for raw material were arranged through third-party accounts,” it states. »CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Ahmedabad