DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE DAY AFTER BALOCH REBELS HIJACKED TRAIN WITH 440 ON BOARD BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY Pakistan train siege ends: 21 hostages dead, all 33 attackers killed, says Army SALEEM AHMED & ASIF SHAHZAD QUETTA, MARCH 12 THE WORLD U.S. WEAPONS FLOW TO UKRAINE AGAIN, KREMLIN MULLS A CEASEFIRE PROPOSAL PAGE 15 Sudden load drop leads to power outage in Gujarat and Maharashtra Five districts in Gujarat were impacted for over four hours KAMAAL SAIYED & ADITI RAJA SURAT, VADODARA, MARCH 12 AT LEAST five districts in South Gujarat witnessed a major poweroutageforoverfourhours on Wednesday afternoon due to a sudden load drop that led to a shut down of four power plants in Gujarat and Maharashtra The outage was caused by a sudden drop in load in the grid that impacted the Ukai, Kakrapar and Surat Lignite Power Plant (SLPP) in South GujaratandTarapurPowerPlant in Maharashtra. Poweroutagesfornearlyfour hours were reported in the districts of Surat, Bharuch, Navsari, Vapi and Valsad, disrupting the power supply of the Dakshin Gujarat Vij Company Limited (DGVCL) as well as Torrent Power in old city area of Surat. The authorities are probing the cause of the outage even as the power was restored later on Wednesday evening. DGVCL MD Yogesh Chaudhary told The Indian CONTINUEDONPAGE2 PAKISTANI SECURITY forces stormed a train on Wednesday that had been hijacked by separatist militants, killing all 33 attackers and ending a day-long standoff involving hundreds of hostages, the military said. SeparatistBalochmilitantson Tuesdayblewuptherailwaytrack and hurled rockets at the Jaffar Expresswhenitwasonitswayto Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from Balochistan's capital of Quetta, a security source said. The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) had A security person stands guard near a train carrying empty coffins at a railway station in Quetta Wednesday. The coffins are being sent to Bolan, where a train was hijacked. Reuters claimedtohavecarriedouttheattack and warned that the hostages’ lives would be at risk if thegovernmentdidnotnegotiate. The Pakistan military spokesperson, Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry,said21hostages and all 33 insurgents had been killed. He said 440 people had been on board. “Today we freed alargenumberof people,includingwomenandchildren...Thefinal operation was carried out with great care,” Chaudhry said, adding that no civilians were killed in the operation. He said the security forces had cleared the train “bogie to bogie”. An AP report said security forceshadrescued346hostages. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 India needs to grow 8% Telangana arrests two for progress, core sector women journalists for video critical of CM must invest: SBI chief HITESH VYAS, GEORGE MATHEW & SANDEEP SINGH RAHUL V PISHARODY & NIKHILA HENRY HYDERABAD, MARCH 12 MUMBAI, MARCH 12 INDIADEFINITELYneedstogrow at8percenttoprogress,andthis needs consumption and private capital expenditure, said Challa Sreenivasulu Setty, Chairman, State Bank of India, the largest bank in the country with a deposit base of Rs 52.29 lakh crore. “India definitely requires a growth rate of 8 per cent to progress, but this (current) growth rate (of around 6 per cent) is not to be really worried about…Wemustrealisethatthe slowdown which we are talking `5.00 ● WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 THE EXPRESS INTERVIEW C S SETTY CHAIRMAN, STATE BANK OF INDIA about could be a blip. The longterm story of India is intact,” Setty told The Indian Express in an interview. According to him, while private capital expenditure is CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 HYDERABAD POLICE arrested two YouTube journalists on Wednesday over a video critical of Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy. The two women were arrested based on a complaintfiledbyaCongressworker. According to police, Revathi Pogadadanda(44),managingdirector of YouTube channel Pulse DigitalNewsNetwork,andTanvi Yadav alias Bandi Sandhya (25), an employee of the channel, werearrestedinconnectionwith a “derogatory” video shot at the headquarters of the opposition UP, Maharashtra top list of those freed from cyber crime centres College student raped by 7 men over 18 months in Banaskantha MAHENDER SINGH MANRAL Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS). Thetwo,whopolicesaywere involvedin“socialmediatrolling” and implicated in two previous cases,havebeenremandedinjudicial custody for 14 days. The complainant, a state secretary of the Congress Social Media Cell, had alleged that a video was being circulated on X, where a representative from Pulse News could be seen interviewinganindividual,provoking derogatory and abusive statementsagainsttheChief Minister. He alleged this indicated a deliberate attempt by the channel to defame and spread false propaganda, adding that such posts could incite divisions CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 ENHANCED STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP India, Mauritius sign eight pacts as PMs decide to elevate ties India to build new Mauritius Parliament building, train 500 civil servants SHUBHAJIT ROY NEW DELHI, MARCH 12 PRIMEMINISTERNarendraModi and Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Chandra Ramgoolam decided Wednesday to elevate the status of the India-Mauritius partnership to an “Enhanced Strategic Partnership”. The Indian government announcednewinfrastructureprojects — small in scale and meant for the local communities — worth 500 million Mauritian rupees (about Rs 100 crore). It will also build the new Parliament building in Mauritius. The two countries agreed to settle their mutual trade in local currency. After the bilateral meeting in Port Louis, Prime Minister Modi said, “Today, Prime Minister Navin Chandra Ramgoolam and I decided to give the India-Mauritius partnership the status of ‘EnhancedStrategicPartnership’.” “In the second phase of community development projects, new projects worth 500 million Mauritianrupeeswillbestarted. Five hundred civil servants from MauritiuswillbetrainedinIndia in the next five years,” he said. PM Narendra Modi with Mauritius President Dharambeer Gokhool (left) and PM Navinchandra Ramgoolam in Port Louis. PTI “We decided that India will cooperate in building the new Parliament building in Mauritius. This will be a gift to Mauritius from the Mother of Democracy,” Modi said. He also outlined the vision forGlobalSouth—MAHASAGAR or “Mutual and Holistic CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 E EXPLAINED THURSDAY, MARCH 13, 2025, AHMEDABAD, LATE CITY, 18 PAGES Behind Delhi’s ● outreach CHINA’S ASSERTION and its expanding footprint in the Indian Ocean has been closely tracked by Delhi. For this very reason, it has been firming up alliances, especially those related to maritime security, with island nations in the region. EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE AHMEDABAD, MARCH 12 NEW DELHI, MARCH 12 AS THE government brought home 549 Indian nationals who had been deceived with fake job offers and forced into cybercrime activities in Southeast Asia, a probe has revealed that 65 of them are from Uttar Pradesh, 61 from Maharashtra, 57 from Gujarat and 48 from Punjab. All of them have been questionedbymultipleagencies, CONTINUEDONPAGE2 Smart The Indian nationals were brought back home in two batches — 266 on Monday and 283 on Tuesday. PTI A 20-YEAR-OLD college student was allegedly raped by seven men over a span of one-and-ahalf year on multiple occasions in Banaskantha district, said police. The perpetrators, also college students, used a private video of the young woman to allegedly blackmail her. The matter came to light on Tuesday and an FIR was subsequently lodged. CONTINUEDONPAGE2 16 steps to end discrimination: In a Bengal village, 5 Dalits enter temple for the first time RAVIK BHATTACHARYA KOLKATA, MARCH 12 IT’S 10 am, and the village of Gidhagram in West Bengal’s Purba Bardhaman district — about 150 km from Kolkata — has turned into a fortress. The village is preparing for a historic, never-before-seen event: in a few minutes, a group of Dalits fromthevillagewillenterthevillage’s Gidheshwar temple — an event that they hope marks the beginningof theendof centuries Dalits enter the temple in Gidhagram village. Partha Paul of discrimination. “The 16 steps we climbed to enter the temple and offer Puja ended generations of discrimination,” said 50-year-old Mamata Das after the event. Mamata was among the first five people of the Dalit Das subcaste group to enter the temple Wednesday. She and the others — Santanu Das, 45, Lakkhi Das, 30, Puja Das, 27, and Sasthi Das, 45 — are among the village’s 550 Dalit inhabitants who have, until recently, never been allowed CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 One dialect, one fable at a time: A Telugu model opens a window for India AI dream PAGE 1 ANCHOR VIDHATRI RAO HYDERABAD, MARCH 12 “HOW WOULD you describe a cloud when it’s about to rain?” For close to a year now, an army of volunteers in Telangana has been getting people to talk. Andso,theytalk—familystories, thehumdrumof theirdailylives, the day’s weather, fables, leg- Student volunteers recording voice samples for Swecha’s Telugu LLM project. Swecha ends. Sometimes, they read — from newspaper reports, books. All of which is precious data, the kind that Swecha, a Hyderabadbased non-profit, hopes will some day add up to a Telugu Large Language Model (LLM). As India attempts to build its own LLM, Swecha’s experience with documenting the language — in this case, Telugu — offers a window into what an Indian model will need to factor in. Indian languages, rich in detail,areknowntohavenumerous CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Ahmedabad