India Archive

The acrid bite of tear gas cut through the damp morning air of Chatri Chowk just before nine o'clock, carrying the bitter chemical sting that instantly clears market alleys. In the shadow of the Shahi Masjid’s 120-foot minaret, the sound of splintering stone competed with frantic shouts. Women in dark headscarves formed a human chain at the front lines, pressing their bodies against cold galvanized iron barricades as police batons slammed down on asphalt in heavy, rhythmic cadence.

What initially started as a verbal objection to the public showing of a film on Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) accused Umar Khalid at Pondicherry University quickly degenerated into physical clashes on September 25. The disruption broke out when individuals linked with the Students' Federation of India (SFI), the Ambedkar Students' Association (ASA), and the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) assaulted members belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

Ahead of the planned 2nd October demonstration organized by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) targeting Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), emerging digital evidence indicates that CJP organizers are mobilizing cadres across multiple states while openly discussing plans to replicate the aggressive, violent regime change models witnessed in Nepal and Bangladesh should the central government take any administrative or law-enforcement action against their demonstrators.

The Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) aggressive push to expand its contentious street politics into the Northeast met a firm administrative wall in Guwahati over the weekend.

The dawn mist hung low over the agricultural fringe of Ashok Nagar, carrying the sharp scent of wet earth and damp mustard leaves. At daybreak on Wednesday, September 23, Fateh Singh stepped onto the cart track running parallel to the rusted rails of the Linepar cutoff, carrying an enamel bowl of grain to scatter for wild pigeons. His destination was an isolated masonry pump-house on his plot—a squat, windowless structure housing an electric submersible tubewell that fed the adjacent furrows.

The acrid stench of scorched fiberglass and smoldering tires cut through the heavy autumn mist settling over the Grand Trunk Road just after two in the morning. Under the harsh sodium floodlights illuminating the concrete perimeter of Girls Hostel 3, the sound of splintering plate glass came in rapid, rhythmic bursts. Hundreds of heavy terracotta planters had already been wrenched from the terrace borders of the campus mall, pulverized into clay dust across the paving stones as thousands of students surged forward.

Tensions flared in Hooghly district on Saturday, 26th September, when the vehicle of All India Trinamool Congress (AITC or TMC) spokesperson and MLA Kunal Ghosh was ambushed in Uttarpara. Ghosh was en route to Serampore to take part in a high-profile public meeting organized for his party chief and former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

The mobile phone on the bedside table vibrated against the dark wood, shattering the heavy silence of a Dharapur home at precisely two o'clock on a Saturday morning. When Nimisha Thakuria’s mother answered, expecting a hurried check-in from a daughter who had promised to stay overnight at a university hostel, the voice that emerged from the earpiece was fractured and desperate.