DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PATNA, PUNE, VADODARA ● POSTAL REGN. NO. JAIPUR CITY/001/2024-26 JOURNALISM OF COURAGE SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2025, JAIPUR, LATE CITY, 18 PAGES `6.00 WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 ‘ARC OF HISTORY IS BENDING NOW’ India’s rise is a stabilising force, now dominance of hegemon contested: FM ‘We can’t afford to be spectators... we must be active participants shaping outcomes... preserving autonomy’ Wangchuk’s wife moves top court against his arrest under NSA EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 3 GITANJALI ANGMO, the wife of activist Sonam Waghchuk, has movedaHabeasCorpuspetition before the Supreme Court, challengingherhusband’sarrest under the National Security Act (NSA) forallegedlyplayinga role ininstigatingtheviolentprotests in Ladakh on September 24, which led to four deaths in police firing. According to the court’s officialwebsite,Angmofiledherpetition on Thursday evening. The court is currently on Dussehra vacation and will reopen on October 6 when Angmo's lawyers are likely to request for an urgent hearing. Meanwhile, in a post on X, Angmowrote:“Ihavesoughtrelief from the Supreme Court of India through a Habeas Corpus petitionagainst Wangchuk'sdetention.It isoneweektoday. Still I have no information about Sonam Wangchuk's health, the condition he is in nor the grounds of detention.” Wangchuk was detained on September26underNSA,which empowers governments to act pre-emptively against individuals seen as a threat to public CONTINUEDONPAGE2 NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 3 Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with economist and former Rajya Sabha MP N K Singh at the Kautilya Economic Conclave in New Delhi on Friday. ANI DAMINI NATH NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 3 LIZ MATHEW & ARUN JANARDHANAN NEW DELHI, CHENNAI, OCTOBER 3 THEBJPisexploringthepossibility of a political realignment following the stampede at a rally of film star-turned-politician Vijay in Karur, leaving 41 dead. The party has laid the blame for the incident on the state government,ledbytheDMK,accusing officials of negligence — notably leaving Vijay out of its statements. During his rallies, Vijay, who has floated the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), has been attacking both the DMK and BJP. However,withVijayonthebackfoot after the stampede, the BJP believes it could open a line to At the site of the stampede in Karur, Tuesday. ANI ‘LEADER VANISHED, NO REMORSE’: HC SLAMS VIJAY PARTY PAGE 7 the mega star, whose popularity is evident at the huge meetings he has been holding. “Backroom channels have been opened,” a senior BJP CONTINUEDONPAGE2 PRITISH RAJ NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 3 CONTINUEDONPAGE2 the Ministry of Finance and the Institute of Economic Growth, the Finance Minister said that sanctions,tariffsanddecoupling strategies are testing alliances thatonceappearedsolidandare creating new coalitions. These dynamics,shesaid,highlightvulnerabilityandresilienceforIndia and the choices the country makes will determine “whether resiliencebecomesafoundation for leadership or merely a buffer against uncertainty”. Framingtoday’schallengeasa CONTINUEDONPAGE2 Vijay under pressure IIAS IN BRUSSELS after stampede, BJP At multilateral body, India pushes for new global governance index sees opportunity in After its critique of indices on freedom, democracy, governance TN, opens line to him Para games in Delhi: Stray dogs bite Kenya, Japan coaches at Nehru stadium LEAVING THE organisers perplexed, a Kenyan men's coach and a Japanese women's assistant coach, who are part of the 12th World Para Athletics Championships in the capital, were bitten by stray dogs at the warm-up track of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on Friday morning, officials said. CALLING India’s rise as a stabilising force on the global stage as “neither accidental nor transient”, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in an apparent reference to the US, said Friday that the “absolute dominance once enjoyed by a hegemon is now contested.” Speaking at the Kautilya EconomicConclave,organisedby Dog catchers at the JLN Stadium, the venue of the World Para Athletics Championships. Express OVERTHEpastfewyears,several global indices have portrayed India in a negative light and the government has questioned their methodology. Now, as the current president of the International Institute of Administrative Sciences (IIAS), India has proposed a new international governance index, The Indian Express has learnt. India, which won the presidency of the Brussels-based IIAS forthefirsttimeinJunethisyear, has pitched for research on establishing this index. As India completed 100 days of its threeyear presidency, IIAS released AIIMS study shows how training gap in certifying brain death hits organ donation ANONNA DUTT NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 3 ASURVEYof 177of thecountry’s topneurosurgeons,neurologists and critical care specialists shows that over half (59.2 per cent) were not trained in medicalcollegestocertifybraindeath — a knowledge gap that impacts organ donations, according to a studypublishedrecentlybydoctors at the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), Delhi. While nearly three-fourth (74.5%) of the doctors surveyed worked at teaching hospitals, only 10 per cent said they regularly trained their residents in brain death certification. More than a third of the doctors said CONTINUEDONPAGE2 E EXPLAINED Wangchuk is accused of instigating Ladakh mob SIDDHARTH UPASANI & AANCHAL MAGAZINE ● Friday alistof achievementsthat includedadvancingthisresearch agenda through initiatives such as the international governance index. When reachedforcomment, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) secretary and IIAS president V Srinivas said: CONTINUEDONPAGE2 BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY IAF chief details Pak losses: F-16s, JF-17s among aircraft taken out on ground, in air Manohar Kahaniyan, he says on Pak claims about downing Indian aircraft AMRITA NAYAK DUTTA NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 3 IN FIRST public remarks detailing Pakistani losses during the hostilities that followed Operation Sindoor, Indian Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal A P Singh said Friday that Indian strikes at three separate locations inside Pakistan resulted in damage to a C-130 aircraft, an Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft and “four tofive fighteraircraft, most likely F-16s” parked in hangars. Additionally, an AEW&C aircraft or a Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft, as well as five advanced fighters of the F-16 GOVT & POLITICS ARMY CHIEF WARNS PAK: INDIA WILL NOT SHOW RESTRAINT NEXT TIME PAGE 6 and JF-17 class, were taken out in long-range strikes launched by the IAF, he said. This is the first confirmation of the type of Pakistani aircraft CONTINUEDONPAGE2 Violent protests sweep PoK, India says Pak oppression the cause Boosting donation DESPITE INDIA performing among the highest number of organ transplants in the world, the national organ donation rate has hovered under one per million population for years, compared with more than 30 per million in countries such as Spain. Experts point out that better awareness, stronger hospital systems and streamlined brain death certification are critical to bridging this gap. Air Chief Marshal A P Singh addresses the media in New Delhi on Friday, ahead of IAF Day on October 8. PTI THE WORLD SHUBHAJIT ROY NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 3 TRUMP ULTIMATUM TO HAMAS: ACCEPT DEAL BY SUNDAY MUNICH AIRPORT DISRUPTED BY DRONES PAGE 14 IN ITS first official statement on the wave of protests in Pakistanoccupied Kashmir, the Indian government said Friday that the “brutalities by Pakistani forces on innocent civilians” is a consequenceof Pakistan’s“oppressive approach”. The government also underlined that the territories are under “forcible and illegal occupation” of Pakistan. At least 10 people have been killed in five days of violent protests since Monday in PoK, and Pakistan Prime Minister ShehbazSharif hassetupacommittee of senior officials and ministers to resolve the crisis. Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs, said, “We have seen reportson protests inseveral areas of Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir,includingbrutalitiesby Pakistani forces on innocent civilians.” “We believe that it is a naturalconsequenceof Pakistan’soppressive approach and its systemic plundering of resources CONTINUEDONPAGE2 Six women, a catering unit and a fire that snuffed out their lives, dreams PAGE 1 ANCHOR MANISH KUMAR PATHAK MUMBAI, OCTOBER 3 SHIVANI GANDHI, Raksha Joshi, Durgavati Gupta, Janaki Gupta, Nitu Gupta, and Punita Gautam. LedbyShivani,thesix, members of a catering unit in Mumbai’s Kandivali, had a lot in common — besides the practised ease with which they rolled out theplas,tookbreakfastandlunchorders, and passed on thalis with barely a spill. Most of them lived in the Ram Nagar slums nearby. So whenever they stole some time off their hardscrabble lives back home, they would walk down to the catering unit, where they were paid by the hour. And then, on September 24, a fire that fed on the gas from a leaking cylinder swallowed the narrow cooking area and spread through the 500 sq ft unit. All six women sustained severe burns. A week later, they were all dead. Itwasaroundeightyearsago that Shivani, 53, started ‘Shivani Catering Services’, a popular eateryandtakeawaythatsheran out of a rented space at Ram KishanMistryChawlonMilitary Road, around 400 metres from Kandivali (East) railway station. Shivani began with the Gujarati thepla, the snack that serves as a mealinitself andisapopulareaton-the-go dish among the unit’s clients—mostlypeoplefromthe nearbyhostelsandslumpockets. The unit recently started taking lunch and dinner orders as well. Over time, Shivani had built a network of workers who she would call depending on the orders that day, paying them Rs 50-60 an hour. A month ago, she (Clockwise from left) Shivani Gandhi, Raksha Joshi, Durgavati Gupta, Janaki Gupta, Nitu Gupta and Punita Gautam were killed in a fire at a catering unit in Kandivali area of Mumbai on September 24 Jaipur moved to a space a couple of shops away. It was this shop that caughtfireonSeptember24.The board, left behind by the earlier occupants, still says ‘Geeta Timber House’, its yellow shutters down. “Shivaniwasparticularabout clearing the payment of her workers at the end of each day because she wanted them to have cash in hand when they went back home every evening. Sometimes, she would give them anadvance payment since they had a lot of responsibilities — school fees, health issues and so on. They were like family members. Shivani even went on trips with them,” says Shivani’s husband, Mitul Gandhi, who runs an opticals business and lives in the Ashok Nagar area of Kandivali with his daughters, aged25and22,whoworkinprivate firms. He says he is yet to take a call on whether to restart Shivani’s catering unit. “Shivani employed several poor women in her unit. They worked from 7.30 am till late in the night, depending on the orders. She gave them money on an hourly basis so whenever the women got time, they came for CONTINUEDONPAGE2