DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PATNA, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2025, AHMEDABAD, LATE CITY, 20 PAGES BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY `5.00 WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 AMID STEEP TRUMP TARIFFS Significant progress in trade talks with EU, says Goyal Before Xi meet, Trump says trade deal with India on, repeats ceasefire claim FTA: 10 chapters concluded, EU team to visit soon, Modi the nicest looking guy... a killer... tough as hell: Trump 5 TEST HIV-POSITIVE says Minister Child tested, treated for HIV month before officials flagged 1st case SHUBHAM TIGGA RANCHI, OCTOBER 29 THE MOTHER of one of the children, who was being treated for thalassemia and was infected with HIV, allegedly because of a blood transfusion in Jharkhand’s Chaibasa, has told The Indian Express that her child was diagnosedwiththevirusinSeptember —amonthbeforetheadministration officially confirmed the first case on October 18. According to the child’s mother, hospital staff informed them in September that their child had tested positive for HIV and immediately began administering medicines, assuring them that “these would make the child recover”. The child’s medical records accessed by The Indian Express show that antiretroviral (ART) treatment began on September 24, indicating that the child had been diagnosed with HIV weeks before the administration’s official announcement and raising questions on whether officials attempted to keep the case underwraps.Atotalof fivechildren suffering from thalassemia have been diagnosed with HIV in the district. “Thehospitalstaff startedbehaving differently. They would Union Minister Piyush Goyal RAVI DUTTA MISHRA NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 29 COMMERCE AND Industry Minister Piyush Goyal Wednesday said significant progress has been made in talks withtheEuropeanUnion(EU)to reach a free trade agreement. NewDelhiiskeentowrapup the India-EU Free Trade Agreement. The EU provides a stable market for a range of Indian merchandise exports. India’s exports to the EU in the last financial year stood at CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 HPCL-MITTAL ENERGY: SUSPENDING RUSSIA OIL IMPORTS PAGE 18 SHUBHAJIT ROY NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 29 AHEAD OF the much-anticipated meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea Thursday where they are expected to sign a trade deal, Trump, in remarks Wednesday,saidhewasgoingto do a “trade deal with India.” US President Donald Trump at a summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, Wednesday. AP C RAJA MOHAN NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 29 WITH A trade deal ready for signature, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to unveil Thursday a “global peace plan” that seeks to cast both as statesmen jointly steering the world away from turbulence. It could also help mark the slow but inevitable emergence of a bipolar global order. The plan, likely to be announced during their summit in Busan, could become the organising framework for an intense phase of US-China engagement over the coming year. Trump is expected to travel India & China agree to maintain LAC stability, continue border mechanisms NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 29 IN THE first high-level military talks since India and China completed the disengagement of troops from key friction points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh last October, the two sides agreed to CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 All eyes on Trump-Xi today, peace plan could mark rise of a new bipolar order FIRST HIGH-LEVEL MILITARY TALKS SINCE DISENGAGEMENT AMRITA NAYAK DUTTA This is the first time that the USPresidenthassaidasmuch,at atimewhentheUShasimposed 50 per cent tariffs on Indian goods — 25 per cent as penalty forbuyingRussianoiland25per cent as universal tariffs. The two sidesareengagedinnegotiations. At the same time, Trump repeated his claims regarding his role in the India-Pakistan ceasefire in May. Officials here said continue to use “existing mechanisms to resolve any ground issues along the border to maintain stability". The 23rd round of Corps Commander-leveltalkswasheld at the Chushul-Moldo border meetingpointonOctober25,the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Wednesday. The meeting — the first high- level engagement since the Special Representatives’ talks on August 19 — came a year after both sides disengaged from the friction points in October last year, following the 22nd round of military talks. FollowingtheagreementbetweenthetwosideslastOctober, both sides have been carrying CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 to Beijing early next year, with Xi undertaking a return visit to Washington later in 2026 — visits that could inaugurate a new phase in the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship. While the trade dispute has dominated headlines for months, neither leader wants to define the relationship merely CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 E EXPLAINED IN JHARKHAND Towards ● de-escalation THE LATEST round of talks indicates attempts by both sides to stabilise the disengagement process along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh and resolve existing border issues, in a move towards eventually achieving de-escalation of troops from the region. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 GUJARAT ADMINISTRATIVE REFORMS PANEL SENDS REPORT TO CM ‘Caste certificate services still among most challenging’ RITU SHARMA AHMEDABAD, OCTOBER 29 DESPITE EFFORTS to streamline the process, caste certificate servicesremainamongthemost challenging, a report by the Gujarat Administrative Reforms Commission (GARC) submitted on Wednesday to Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel has highlighted. The report attributes this to some key "pain points", such as Jan Seva Kendra (JSK) operators often citing documentation inconsistencies, legacy data gaps and caste classification ambiguities, with no system to track howmanycastecertificatesacitizen has received, leading to duplication and poor record management. ThelatestreportbytheGARC – its fifth – includes 12 key recommendations. The report, compiled under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister’s Principal Adviser Hasmukh Adhia, undertakes an reassessment of citizen-centric service delivery across Jan Seva Kendras(JSKs),VillageComputer Entrepreneurs (VCEs), and City Civic Centres while examining operational challenges to CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 RELATED REPORT PAGE 4 THE WORLD DAY AFTER STRIKES KILLED 104, ISRAEL SAYS WILL UPHOLD GAZA CEASEFIRE PAGE 17 INSIDE PROBE ‘BRIBES OF `25-35 LAKH’ PER POST: ED TO TAMIL NADU DGP PAGE 10 PRESIDENT’S RAFALE SORTIE President Droupadi Murmu before her sortie on a Rafale jet at the IAF station in Ambala on Wednesday. She became the first Indian President to fly in two IAF fighters — her previous sortie was in a Sukhoi 30 MKI in April 2023. Kamleshwar Singh REPORT,PAGE10 Voices of discontent but Tejashwi’s challenge: How to expand tent, bring them in VANDITA MISHRA RAGHOPUR, MUZAFFARPUR, SITAMARHI, OCTOBER 29 AS YOU step outside Patna, the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government’s infrastructure development story that seems so visible in Patna, lurches and becomes morefitful.Thewideandgleaming new bridge and the recently constructed4-lanehighwayrepresent a smoother connection — but also etch a sharp and glaring disconnect. Long distance travel has been made far easier and shorter now in Bihar, but away from Patna, the distinction between rural and urban still blurs perilously,thenarrowroadisstill all too prone to the ubiquitous traffic snarl and water-logging. Even Muzaffarpur, Bihar’s second most urbanised centre after Patna, also designated a “Smart City”, continues to battle the dismal “jam” and “jal jamaav” inef- DECISION 2025 BIHAR CongleaderRahulGandhiwithRJDleader TejashwiYadavataMuzaffarpurrallyon Wednesday. PTI RELATEDREPORTS,PAGES15,10 fectually. In Sitamarhi, residents point angrily to the Mehsaul overbridge, the town's lifeline, on which work started almost two decades and some elections ago, but is still incomplete. Outside Patna, the battleground in this election seems, therefore, on the face of it, more hospitable to the Opposition. In principle,arangeof factorsseem to be working for it: There is unevendevelopment,patchydelivery of government schemes, price rise, clamour against “afsarshahi”(ruleof thebureaucrat) andincreasedcorruption—even the latest Mahila Rojgar Yojana, consisting of election-eve CONTINUED ON PAGE 15 Under ED lens: 22 de-addiction centres run by Punjab doctor that ‘sold pills in open market’ ANJU AGNIHOTRI CHABA, RITU SARIN & AISWARYA RAJ CHANDIGARH, NEW DELHI, DEHRADUN, OCTOBER 29 WHEN THE Punjab government decided on Tuesday that no private person will be allowed to operate more than five drug deaddictioncentresinthestate,the move was meant to bring transparency to a system that has cometobemiredincontroversy. Nowhere is the crisis more apparent than in the case of 22 pri- vate centres being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate afterallegationsemergedof fake patient admissions, procuring more drugs than required, and peddling them in the open market, The Indian Express found. All 22 were run by one man, Chandigarh-based doctor Amit Bansal.Thefacilitieswerespread across 16 districts in Punjab and one in Chandigarh, and are now allshuttered.Whileotherprivate players were running de-addiction centres in Punjab too, this wasthehighestbyasingleentity. While trouble for Bansal’s One of the de-addiction centres in Jalandhar. Express clinicsfirststartedin2022,when twoemployeesof ade-addiction centreinLudhianawerearrested forallegedirregularities,hecame under sharper scrutiny last year, whenvideoswentviralfromone of his facilities purportedly showing staff selling medicines in the open market. Unlike the state government’s de-addiction centres, which give away the tablets to recovering addicts for free, such privatecentres,whichcameinto existencein2015-16underrules framed in 2011, are supposed to charge Rs 40 per pill. Except, Bansal’s centres allegedly CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Acquitted after 43 years, Indian-origin man in US now faces deportation PAGE 1 ANCHOR VIDHEESHA KUNTAMALLA NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 29 WHEN THE call came, Saraswathi Vedam was in universityinMassachusettsin1982, halfway through her Master’s degree in community health education. Her younger brother, Subramanyam — “Subu” to family — was on the phone. He had been detained and, a few months later, accused of murdering a classmate. “He told me not to worry,” Saraswathi told The Indian Express. “He said, ‘They are just trying to pressure me. It’s going to be okay. Please don’t disturb Amma and Appa’s trip to Europe’.” But it wasn’t okay. Within hours, Saraswathi drove hundreds of miles south to State College, the college town that's home to Penn State University's Subramanyam Vedam outside a courthouse in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania in February; and (right) a 1981 photograph of Vedam with his sister Saraswathi. AP main campus. It was where they hadgrownup,wheretheirfather KVedam,aphysicsprofessorand later professor emeritus, and theirmotherNalini,whoranalibrary, led the ideal diaspora life. “While driving home, I remember thinking the whole timethatthiscouldn’tbereal.He was 20. Just a kid,” she said on the phone from Vancouver, Canada, where she is Professor and Lead Investigator at University of British Columbia. A few months later, in 1983, Subu was convicted and sen- tenced to life without parole. It wouldtake43yearsforhisname to be cleared — in August this year,aPennsylvaniajudgefinally overturnedhisconviction,ruling that prosecutors had concealed thousands of pages of evidence that would have proved his innocence. By then, Subu had spent more than two-thirds of his life in prison. But when freedom came, it wasn’t real. Twenty-four hours after his exoneration, he was detained again, this time by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE)overdeportation charges dating back to 1988 based on the murder conviction and a related drug offence. “I couldn’t even hug him,” Saraswathi said. “There was plexiglassbetweenus.Yet,when I saw him, he stood up straight and said, ‘Akka, my name has been cleared. I’m not a prisoner anymore, I’m a detained man.’” Immigration lawyer Ava Benach, who is representing him at the Board of Immigration Appeals,toldtheAssociatedPress, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Ahmedabad