The editorial Page: air pollution plan needs political will, not an eye on the election cycle 10 FRIdAY, JUlY 3, 2026 Journalism of Courage nEW dELHI, LAtE cIty, 20 PAGES ₹7.00 (₹8 RAIPuR, ₹15 SRInAGAR) 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 lLok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will inaugurate a two-day orientation programme for the newly elected members of the West Bengal Assembly. Move to deePen MaritiMe, defence cooPeration in the indo-Pacific Modiflagstrustamidturmoil,Takaichi underlines:‘Buildtiesasbrother,sister’ Economic security, energy resilience as pillars, India and Japan unveil raft of measures to deepen bilateral relations lMiniSter of State for Exter- nal Affairs Pabitra Margherita and Bihar Governor Syed Ata Hasnain will travel to Iran to represent India at the state funeral for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. divya a & deeptiman tiwary New Delhi, July 2 POSITIOnIng ECOnOMIC security and energy resilience as the defining pillars of the next phaseoftheirbilateralties,India andJapanThursdayunveiled a raftofinitiativesinthisdirection amid shifting geopolitics and globalenergydisruptionsowing to the West Asia crisis. These include a joint roadmap on economic security, a new framework on mobility, and an artificial intelligence (AI) partnership. “In the environment of global turbulence today, mutual trust is our biggest strategic Track These and more on www.indianexpress.com business as usual By EP UNNY asset,” Prime Minister narendra Modi said in his joint media statement alongside visiting Japanese counterpart Sanae Takaichi. Takaichi linked the new initiatives to the changing geopolitical environment, saying bothcountriesfacedchallenges arising from “economic weaponisation and non-marketpractices”andneededtourgently build resilient critical mineral supply chains. Addressing Takaichi as his younger sister, and welcoming her on her first visit to India as PrimeMinister,Modisaid,“The economies of India and Japan are complementary. From cul- turalvaluestomoderntechnology, there is similarity in our thinkingandapproachaswell.” “And above all, the foundationofourrelationsrestsonunbreakable mutual trust,” he said, reflecting the growing convergence between the two countries. Takaichi said that both leaders were on the same page to develop this relationship as brother and sister. She also noted that in the area of energy security impacted by the West Asia situation, both Japan and India bear the responsibility to provide for region-wide energy security. »continued on Page 2 From strategic stockpiling to AI ecosystem, roadmap is rolled out divya a nation New Delhi, July 2 Page 9 mumbai: man dies afTer falling inTo manhole; CiViC body susPends 4 offiCials Pm narendra modi with his Japanese counterpart sanae Takaichi at rashtrapati Bhavan, Thursday. REnuKA PuRI relaTed rePorT, P 5 In THE wake of global energy supply disruptions, India and Japan Thursday came out with a joint statement on energy resilience during the visit of JapanesePrimeMinisterSanae Takaichi, expressing their shared intention to work together as responsible powers and major energy-consuming countries in Asia. Thetwosidesalsoadvanced cooperation“toenhancetheresilienceandcompetitivenessof explained hoW india and JaPan Can deePen Their business Ties Page 12 both countries in the field of AI”. The aim is to bring about innovation and growth in both countries, in order to build a safe, secure, trustworthy, inclusive, human-centric, sustainable, accountable, and in- novation-oriented AI ecosystem, the joint statement on AI said. Towards energy resilience, both sides highlighted the importance of regional initiatives tostrengthenenergyresilience, such as India’s support for energy security in South Asia and Japan’s Partnership On Wide Energy and resources resilience (POWErr Asia). Following discussions between Modi and Takaichi, the Ministry of Petroleum and natural gas and the Japanese Ram temple footage shows five of eight held removing and hiding cash bundles Agency claims it had no say in hiring counting staff, names came from bank Faizabad Bar association lawyers demand FIr against Trust general secretary champat rai, member anil mishra and official Gopal rao at ram Janmabhoomi Police station in ayodhya, Thursday. PtI deeptiman tiwary New Delhi, July 2 explained CLOSED-CIrCuIT television footage recovered from the ram temple in Ayodhya shows at least five of the eight men arrested for the alleged theft of donated funds removing and hiding cash during the counting process. Sources in Ayodhya police said thorough scanning of 45 daysoffootagefromthetemple’s Pilgrim Facility Centre showed five counting personnel removing bundles of notes and hiding them in their clothes or socks. Meanwhile, the agency throughwhichthecountingpersonnel were hired has claimed hoW TemPles deal WiTh donaTions Page 12 »continued on Page 2 politics »continued on Page 2 Page 6 Trinamool rebels meeT eC, Poll Panel seeks resPonses of boTh sides express special Worry over uSerS acceSSing bLocked SiteS thatitdidnotscoutforthemen, and that these names were recommendedforappointmentby theStatebankofIndiawherethe donated money was deposited. Sourcessaidpolicehavealready searched premises linked to the accused seen removing donationmoneyandrecoveredcash. Police have so far recovered nearly rs 80 lakh. Govt looks at stricter ‘We are helpless’: in morbi, bJP minister’s rules for VPN providers: brothers join protest over compensation for Bombay HC: Why can’t Office in India, appoint land lost to adani power transmission infra citizens protest Govt compliance officials Farmers on indefinite hunger strike in Patidar heartland, 35 panchayat heads decisions… being made Soumyarendra barik support protest; Govt says ‘continuous discussions’ on, ‘good decision’ soon E. explained slaves by slapping cases New Delhi, July 2 THE CEnTrE is working on an expansive legal framework to curtail virtual private network (VPn) providers that could requirethemtoestablishalocal Indiapresenceandappointkey personnel to serve as a liaison with the government, The Indian Express has learnt. This comes after a controversial directive in 2022 by the Indian Computer Emergency responseTeam(Cert-In)which requiredVPnserviceproviders to store a vast amount of customer data, including their names, email IDs, contact numbers and IP addresses. However,anewlegalframework is now being seen as necessaryduetoanimplicitacknowledgement that the 2022 directives may not have been abletoyieldsatisfactoryresults. The primary concern that the Why VPn? VPN services allow users to mask their IP addresses and browse the Internet via servers located elsewhere. So, users can browse the web anonymously and also visit content that has been blocked in India by using a VPN server located outside the country. government has is that VPns are being increasingly used by people to get around the blocking of apps and online content. The new framework could requireVPnoperatorstoestablish offices in India and hire compliance officers who can address grievances raised by »continued on Page 2 ritu Sharma Jetpar (Morbi), July 2 In burnIng 40-degree heat, about a hundred individuals, half of them women, sit under a shamiana. At the dayro, or local folk gathering, there is musicandhorseparades,snapshots of the culture of gujarat’s Zalavad region,of whichMorbi and Surendranagar are part. The people in the gathering have come together to protest. Someofthemenhavetonsured heads. A small but growing numberofprotestershavebeen onahungerstrikesinceJune17; some have needed medical attention. The majority of the protesters are Patidar farmers — and they want higher compensation for the use of their land Bharatbhai amrutiya (in white) and rakeshbhai shivlal amrutiya (in black), brothers of Gujarat minister kantilal amrutiya, at the protest site in morbi’s Jetpar village. RItu SHARMA for high-voltage transmission infrastructure for power from the Khavda renewable Energy Zone in Kutch district. The towers for the hightension power transmission cables are being installed by Halvad Transmission Ltd, a SpecialPurposeVehicle(SPV)of Adani Energy Solutions Ltd (AESL),thecountry’slargestprivate-sectorpowertransmission and distribution company. Protests against the high- tension transmission line and towers began at several places in the state on June 9, and were concentrated in Morbi district, where farmers claim they are the “worst affected” by the project. OnJune15,thegujaratCongresslaunchedastatewideprotest rally in gandhinagar, and oneoftheparty’sdemands was aligned with the agitation in Morbi.AgoodnumberofMorbi farmers have been seen in the rally that is currently progressing through other districts. The ruling bJP is yet to engage seriously with the protesters, but it has remained careful to not be seen as being against them. Morbi, the Patidar-dominatedepicenterofthe agitation, has historically »continued on Page 2 Justice Jamdar sets aside externment order, says police are public servants omkar gokhale Mumbai, July 2 SETTIngASIDEaMumbaiPolice externment order against a political activist, the bombay High Court Thursday observed that merely arranging a morcha oraprotest against “certain decisions” of the bJP-led government at the Centre could notbeagroundforexternment, affecting the person’s fundamental rights. referring to a plea by 49year-old Saeed Ahmad Abdul Wahid Chaudhary, who said he was general secretary of the So- Justice madhav J Jamdar of the Bombay high court cialistDemocraticPartyofIndia (SDPI) and had been externed for a year, the single-judge benchofJusticeMadhavJJamdaraskedpoliceifcitizenswere »continued on Page 2 l38-year-old BaBITa dhakad, who was In ToUch wITh Jem oPeraTIves, develoPed an emoTIonal connecTIon wITh The IdeoloGy… havInG Been dIsIllUsIoned wITh socIeTy: InvesTIGaTors ‘Curious’ to ‘Jaish link’: Behind the arrest of Jaipur woman with a secret online life hamza khan whom they rarely spotted outside the home. And when they did, there was nothing out of THE CASE of a Jaipur woman the ordinary about her. but allegedly establishing contact then, her alleged online jourwith the top leadership of the ney into extremist circles rebanned Jaish-e-Mohammed mained invisible even to those (JeM) has left investigators immediately around her: her searching for answers — not family had no idea about the just about the alleged links, but late-night conversations that also about how an ordinary investigators now say became resident of the city’s the foundation of a page 1 outskirts ended up probe into her alin conversations legedlinkswithJeM. with one of the most On June 22, rajaswanted terror networks. than’s Anti-Terrorism Squad In the narrow lanes of a re- (ATS) arrested her under the cently developed residential unlawful Activities (Prevencolony offTonk road inJaipur, tion) Act (uAPA). neighbours describe babita According to investigators, Dhakad, 38, as a quiet woman babita’s purported disillusionJaipur, July 2 anchor ment with life and society at large may have led her to establish such contacts. She had gotten married in 2017, but the marriage barely lasted a month. Having completed a computer course in the same year, she used to spend a lot of time on the internet, they say. Over a year ago, she started interacting with “jihadi and anti-national” social media pages, handles and profiles, which, officials say, was simply “borne out of curiosity”. “She used to watch their videos and found them to be braveand charismatic,” anofficial told The Indian Express. However, as she allegedly started going deeper and Babita dhakad was arrested by rajasthan’s aTs under UaPa on June 22. deeper into the ideology, she liked and interacted with the social media pages associated with JeM, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), among others, “especially liking the pages with guns as the profile picture”, an officer said. “She had joined over 300 such groups on social media. From there, she exchanged numbers and also started chatting with some of the persons behind these groups on WhatsAppandFacebookMessenger,” the officer said, adding that contacts from Pakistan and Afghanistan were allegedly found on her phone. Online ‘friendships’ “Essentially,shewasluredby a person who kept praising her beauty, her eyes, etc. As conversationswentlongintothenight, she grew close and eventually wantedtogetmarriedtotheperson who identified himself as Abu ubaidah, a close associate of JeM founder and leader Masood Azhar,” the officer said. Another person she had allegedly been in touch was someone claiming to be Yusuf Azhar,aliasMohammedSalim, MasoodAzhar’sbrother-in-law, the officer added. However, as per Indian security agencies, Yusuf was killed in the strikes carried out on May 7 last year, as part of Operation Sindoor in the aftermath of the terror attack in Pahalgam that took place on April 22. “During their video calls, ubaidah used to keep his face covered, saying he can’t reveal his face for safety reasons. As she wanted to get married to him,a‘ceremony’wasarranged with a Muslim cleric where she was asked to recite a kalma for conversion, and she was given an Islamic name, Khadija. She was also taught about namaz,” the officer said. Investigators said she “developed an emotional connection with the ideology… having been left out and disillusioned with her own society”. For example, they said one of the pages she had liked was ‘Duniya Dhokebaaz (world is de- New Delhi ceitful)’.Andthroughthechats, she allegedly found validation from persons she considered “brave warriors”, they said. She perhaps “thought that she would have a better life in Pakistan and wanted to travel there too”, the officer said. She had completed her bA, but didn’t have a job.Moreover,her divorce case and a case of dowry harassment were also pending. She had been living with her parents ever since her separation. Subsequently, she was told that she could be brought to Pakistan via the nepal-Saudi Arabia-uAE route. However, when she told them she didn’t »continued on Page 2