Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Indian Cockroach activist ends hunger strike after 26 days as protests spread

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Sonam Wangchuk secures ‘hard bargain’ with Delhi but talks between government and movement leaders stall

The Cockroach activist Sonam Wangchuk has ended a 26-day hunger strike, as youth-led protests continued to erupt across India and leaders of the movement said there was no breakthrough in talks with the government.

Wangchuk had been fasting since June in solidarity with the Cockroach Janata party (CJP), a new youth-led movement that has been holding mass protests calling for government accountability and the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, over exam paper leaks. The leaks affected 2 million students in May and have been linked to more than a dozen suicides.

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‘Cockroach’ protests: India’s Modi promises to punish officials over exam leaks

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PM says ‘those who try to harm the future of our youth will not be spared’ as scandal spirals into widespread anger

Narendra Modi has vowed to set up “fast-track courts” to speed up the punishment of officials accused of leaking examination papers, as the Indian prime minister seeks to quell a youth-led “cockroach” protest movement that has rocked Delhi and posed one of the biggest challenges to his government.

In his first public remarks on the movement, Modi posted on X: “Nothing is more important than the welfare and future of our youth … Those who try to harm the future of our youth will not be spared.”

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Opposition parties shut down Indian parliament in solidarity with ‘cockroach’ protests

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Proceedings suspended as politicians call for Modi government to address police violence and education scandals

India’s opposition parties have shut down parliament in a protest calling for the resignation of the education minister, in solidarity with the new youth-led “cockroach” movement.

Opposition politicians, led by the Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi, gathered outside the parliament building in Delhi on Wednesday, many dressed in black and waving placards calling on Dharmendra Pradhan to quit.

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India’s Cockroach movement protesters show no sign of backing down

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Thousands of people again on the streets of Delhi calling for education reforms despite police violence on Monday

Taru had come to the protest prepared this time. In one hand was an anti-government poster and in the other was a bicycle helmet. “We need to have protection in case Delhi police beat us up again,” said the 25-year-old, who stood among her friends. “We are not scared of them and we won’t run away, no matter what they do. We’ll stay here till they listen.”

On Tuesday, central Delhi still thronged with thousands of protesters, as an unprecedented expression of dissent against the powerful ruling Narendra Modi government showed no sign of abating.

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Tens of thousands of Cockroach movement protesters defy police with Delhi march

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Youth-led group calls on education minister to quit in one of India’s largest anti-government rallies in years

Tens of thousands of protesters have defied police orders and descended on Delhi to demand the resignation of India’s education minister in one of the largest anti-government demonstrations in years.

A huge crowd, largely made up of students and gen Z-ers, filled the streets in the heart of India’s capital from early Monday morning shouting anti-government slogans. Hundreds had already camped out overnight.

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More than 500 feared dead after reports of two shipwrecks off Myanmar, UN says

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Vessels believed to have departed from Myanmar in late June, with mostly Muslim Rohingya minority onboard

The United Nations has said more than 500 people are feared dead after reports of two large shipwrecks off Myanmar since late June.

The UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) and its refugee agency UNHCR voiced alarm in a joint statement at reports “that two boats carrying more than 500 people may have capsized off the coast of Myanmar in recent days”.

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Protests engulf Indian state after rape and murder of 11-year-old girl

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Innocent man lynched by mob in West Bengal as police killing of suspect further escalates tensions

Protests have engulfed the Indian state of West Bengal after the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, the subsequent lynching of an innocent man and the police killing of one of the accused.

Outrage erupted on Sunday after the body of a missing girl was recovered from a pond in a town just outside the state capital, Kolkata.

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US charges Indian criminal gang leader with organising murder of Canadian Sikh activist

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Lawrence Bishnoi, who is in prison in India, is accused of orchestrating assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in 2023

US and Canadian authorities say they have “dismantled” the leadership of a notorious Indian criminal group, charging dozens of operatives who have “inflicted pain and cruelty on people, victims around the globe”, including a high-profile murder in Canada that strained diplomatic relations between Canada and India.

At a press conference on Tuesday, members of the FBI and Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said as part of Operation Hard Ball – a multiyear federal investigation into murder-for-hire plots, shootings, extortion and drug trafficking – they had charged 37 people, some of whom were already in custody. Authorities are still searching for seven fugitives in the US, two in India and one in Europe.

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Search under way after Boeing 737 cargo plane goes missing off Pakistan coast

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Early flight data shows K2 Airways plane crashed into sea with five crew on board south-west of Karachi

Pakistan has located the wreckage of a Boeing cargo plane, the country’s airports authority said, adding that rescuers were searching for the five crew members on board when the aircraft went missing.

The plane was approaching Karachi from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates when radar showed it “rapidly descending” on Tuesday evening after reporting a “navigational system issue”, according to the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA).

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Dowry murders in India no longer spark public anger or debate, study finds

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Thousands of women are killed in dowry disputes each year, despite the practice being banned in 1961

Dowry deaths in India no longer provoke the public anger they once did, despite thousands of women’s lives still being lost every year, according to new research.

The killings – women who are murdered or driven to suicide following dowry disputes between families – have also faded from political debate, despite an increase in cases.

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Sri Lanka prison riot kills 26, with more than 100 others wounded

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Victims with cuts and gunshot injuries rushed to hospital after fighting between prisoners from two drug gangs

Clashes at a Sri Lankan jail have killed 26 people, including seven guards, and wounded more than 100 in the country’s deadliest prison riot in years, officials said.

Victims with cuts and gunshot injuries were rushed to Negombo hospital, north of the capital Colombo after overnight fighting between prisoners from two drug gangs, police said on Monday.

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‘Give him any award, and he’ll come running’: Narendra Modi racks up honours on overseas trips

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Indian prime minister has a habit of collecting awards on his travels, some as their first and only recipient

As Narendra Modi touched down in Seychelles over the weekend, the archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean swiftly bestowed one of its “highest” honours upon the Indian prime minister.

Modi beamed as he accepted the Guardian of the Blue Horizon award from Patrick Herminie, the Seychelles president, complete with a trophy and certificate.

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Pakistan roof collapse kills 14 children at tutoring centre

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Local officials said preliminary reports showed the centre was unregistered and operating inside a privately owned residential building

Fourteen children died after ⁠the roof of a tutoring centre collapsed in Pakistan’s eastern city of ⁠Lahore on Tuesday, ⁠rescue ​officials have said, as authorities opened the way for a possible negligence ⁠investigation.

Punjab’s emergency service said rescuers found children and a 30-year-old female teacher ⁠under the rubble of the private after-school facility. The ​children killed were aged ‌five to ‌16 with most below nine.

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Delhi plans to ban petrol rickshaws and scooters in effort to cut toxic fumes

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Government hopes for 30% of city’s fleet to be electric by 2030, in move hailed as ‘gamechanger’ on air pollution

The unruly chaos of Delhi’s roads would be unrecognisable without the rickshaws and scooters that zip through India’s capital in their millions, emitting toxic fumes in their wake. But now, ambitious policies aim to give the city’s most recognisable vehicles an environmental makeover.

On Monday, Delhi’s government announced plans to eventually ban petrol scooters, motorbikes and autorickshaws in favour of those running on electricity, in an attempt to bring down dangerously high pollution levels in the city by the end of the decade.

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‘Humanity is a privilege’: Umar Khalid on his six years in an Indian jail without trial

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Exclusive: Activist tells of his life as one of India’s most prominent political prisoners and his opposition to the government of Narendra Modi

Prison is hardest at sunset. As the thousands of prisoners incarcerated in Delhi’s most infamous jail are cast out of their cells and forced into the dank yard until darkness falls, prisoner number 626714 feels the punishing dread begin to rise.

Yet the inmate – better known as Umar Khalid – was recently moved to discover that another political prisoner, exiled at a camp thousands of miles from India, wrote of the very same feeling more than 150 years ago.

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Pakistani airstrikes kill dozens in eastern Afghanistan

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Pakistan says strikes were aimed at a terrorist group while Taliban condemn ‘cowardly act of aggression’

Pakistani airstrikes in three eastern provinces of Afghanistan killed 36 civilians and wounded 163 others, Afghan officials have said, as attacks between the two countries showed no sign of abating.

Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, said the operations on Sunday night were aimed at a terrorist group his country blamed for a deadly militant attack in Karachi that killed three security personnel over the weekend.

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Child malnutrition in Nepal has reached ‘alarming’ levels since aid cuts, survey finds

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Fears hard-won gains in reducing child mortality over 20 years are at risk after end of USAID funding for nutrition programmes

Child malnutrition in Nepal has reached “alarming” levels, according to the largest ever survey of under-fives in the country.

The new figures came just over a year after USAID, the former US flagship agency closed by the Trump administration in 2025, stopped funding work on child nutrition in Nepal.

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Pakistan police rescue French woman and children allegedly held captive by husband for 12 years

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Husband arrested after Sylvie Yasmina, 54, and five children found at home in north-western province

Pakistan police say they have rescued a French woman and her five children after she told authorities she had been held captive by her husband for more than a decade and subjected to years of domestic abuse in the country’s north-west.

The woman, identified as 54-year-old Sylvie Yasmina, was rescued earlier this week from a mud-brick home in Bara, a town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border, the district police chief, Waqar Ahmad, said.

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EU faces fierce criticism over plans to host Taliban in Brussels

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Rights campaigners and MEPs say meeting would normalise regime that erases women from public life

Rights campaigners and MEPs have warned that a meeting between EU officials and a Taliban delegation in Brussels risks normalising a regime that has banned girls from school beyond the sixth grade and sought to erase women from public life, while its ranks include two leaders accused of crimes against humanity.

A spokesperson for the Afghan foreign ministry confirmed that a delegation representing the ⁠Taliban had travelled to Brussels after the Belgian foreign ministry issued five single-day visas.

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‘Period tax’ on sanitary products to be abolished, says Pakistan minister

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Campaigners welcome announcement cutting levies on menstrual health items, but say their work to end period poverty is ‘far from over’

Pakistan plans to abolish “period tax”, in a victory for young campaigners who had taken the government to court over the charges.

Finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb announced that sanitary towels and related items were “daily necessities that are indispensable for women’s health, dignity and full participation in social activities”, and said he intended to remove the sales tax.

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