Category Archives: Delhi

‘I just want to go home’: the desperate millions hit by Modi’s brutal lockdown

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The Indian prime minister’s handling of the pandemic has heaped more misery on the country’s poorest citizens

For more than a decade, Begum Jan had managed to survive on the streets of Kolkata. A longtime wheelchair-user, she had a specific spot on a busy street. Rickshaw drivers and passers-by always made sure she had something to eat.

But last week, for the first time since she became homeless after falling ill with tuberculosis and losing her job as a housemaid, the 62-year-old was in danger of starving.

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Divided Delhi under lockdown: ‘If coronavirus doesn’t kill me, hunger will’

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India’s shutdown is catastrophic for Muslims driven from their homes by sectarian carnage and now without food or shelter

It wasn’t possible for Mohammed Idrish to watch Narendra Modi’s address to the nation last Tuesday exhorting 1.3 billion Indians to stay at home. His TV was looted along with everything else in his home in Delhi during the recent anti-Muslim riots in the Indian capital.

When Idrish, a carpenter, heard about Modi urging Indians to stay at home to stop coronavirus spreading, he shook his head again and again. “I don’t understand … I don’t understand. Doesn’t he know we have no home?”

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India executes four men convicted of 2012 Delhi bus rape and murder

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Four found guilty of attack that shocked the world were hanged in capital on Friday morning

India has executed the four men who were convicted of the brutal gang rape and murder of a young woman on bus in Delhi in 2012, a case which shocked the world and brought India’s problem with sexual violence against women into the spotlight.

Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta and Mukesh Singh had been found guilty in a 2013 trial and sentenced to death by hanging, but their execution had been postponed multiple times due to Supreme Court appeals.

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Delhi’s Muslims despair of justice after police implicated in riots

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Allegations mount that police in Indian capital incited and aided recent mob violence and failed to help Muslim victims

On one side of the marketplace, it was carnage. As the Hindu mob descended, Muslim-owned stalls selling car parts were slowly reduced to debris and ashes. But just 100 metres away stood two police stations.

As the mob attacks came once, then twice and then a third time in this north-east Delhi neighbourhood, desperate stallholders repeatedly ran to Gokalpuri and Dayalpur police stations crying out for help. But each time they found the gates locked from the inside. For three days, no help came.

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Death toll from Delhi’s worst riots in decades rises to 38

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New citizenship law has triggered days of violence between Muslims and Hindus

The death toll from Delhi’s worst riots in decades has risen to 38, as a political row broke out over the transfer of a judge who criticised the police and government’s handling of the crisis.

Tensions remained high in India’s capital, as thousands of riot police and paramilitaries patrolled streets littered with the debris from days of sectarian riots.

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‘I thought they would kill me’: Delhi mob victim describes attack – video

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Mohammad Zubair, a Muslim, was brutally attacked by a Hindu group as Delhi experienced some of its worst religious riots in decades. ‘My clothes were drenched in blood,’ he said of his ordeal. Muslims and Hindus across the region have been mourning their loved ones after dozens of people were killed in the latest wave of violence

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Delhi protests: India’s worst religious violence in decades – video report

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The death toll from some of the worst religious violence in Delhi in decades has risen to more than 20, as Muslims fled their homes and several mosques in the capital burned after attacks by Hindu rioters. Clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups that began on Sunday showed no sign of abating, with reports of hundreds injured from gunshot wounds, acid burns, stabbings and wounds from beatings and peltings with stones

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Delhi protests: death toll climbs amid worst religious violence for decades

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Calls for army to be deployed as clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups show no sign of abating

The death toll from the worst religious violence in Delhi in decades has risen to 21, as Muslims fled from their homes and several mosques in the capital smouldered after being attacked by Hindu mobs.

The deathly clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups that began on Sunday showed no sign of abating on the third consecutive day, with reports of early morning looting on some Muslim homes which had been abandoned out of fear.

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Deadly clashes in India as protests take place across country – video

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Police and protesters have clashed across India and six people died during standoffs on Friday in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where tensions exploded between majority Hindus and minority Muslims.

Thousands of protesters have been demonstrating since 11 December in several parts of the country to oppose a new law championed by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, which makes it easier for people from non-Muslim minorities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who settled in India prior to 2015 to obtain Indian citizenship


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India citizenship law: protesters across country defy ban

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Government orders ban on mobile internet as violence escalates

Turmoil has continued to escalate across India over a controversial citizenship law that is seen as discriminatory against Muslims, as tens of thousands defied bans on public assembly to take to the streets, the largest internet shutdown yet was imposed and three more people were killed.

Attempts by the authorities to clamp down on the demonstrations by banning large gatherings in areas across the country proved futile, as protesters gathered in their thousands in Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Bangalore and many other big cities.

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Violent clashes continue in India over new citizenship bill

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Protests spread to Delhi as BJP government accused of making Muslims second-class citizens

Violent clashes erupted in Delhi amid allegations a new citizenship bill discriminates against Muslims and undermines the secular foundations of India, with protests over the legislation spreading to other regions and prompting Japan’s prime minister to cancel a visit to the country.

Thousands took to the streets of Assam’s capital Guwahati for the third day, following the death of two protesters who were caught in police fire on Thursday. The north-eastern state has been the epicentre of the protests against the citizenship amendment bill (CAB).

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Delhi fire: at least 43 dead in ‘horrific’ factory blaze

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Victims mostly labourers and factory workers sleeping in a building in Delhi’s old quarter

Indian authorities are investigating the cause of a devastating fire that has killed at least 43 people in a crowded market in central Delhi.

Firefighters fought the blaze from a distance of 100 metres because it broke out in one of the area’s many alleyways, tangled in electrical wire and too narrow for vehicles to access, authorities at the scene said.

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Royal claims of India’s fake queen exposed as a web of elaborate lies

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A widow claiming to be descended from royalty was believed, and even given a dilapidated palace to live in

For 40 years, stories about India’s most mysterious and reclusive royal family persisted among foreign correspondents in New Delhi. Few were granted an audience with them or were able to report on the tragic downfall of a dynasty said to have ruled a kingdom of five provinces in northern India until 1856.

The widowed Begum Wilayat and her children, Princess Sakina and Prince Ali Raza, also known as Cyrus, claimed to be the heirs of the Nawab of Oudh, descendants of Persian nobility. They reportedly regarded the Mughals, India’s imperial rulers from the 16th to the 19th century, as “common as dirt” and considered “ordinariness not just a crime [but] a sin!”.

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Delhi pollution: farm fires set to continue despite court ruling

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Indian city suffering record levels of poor air quality, partly caused by stubble burning

The illegal burning of crop stubble by farmers in India, one of the biggest causes of the record-breaking pollution that has enveloped Delhi over the past week, is expected to continue for the next two weeks, despite a supreme court order for all farm fires to be halted.

Delhi has been experiencing its longest spell of hazardous air quality since public records began, with the city suffering from “severe” levels of pollution for nine days straight, prompting a public health emergency to be declared.

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‘It’s suffocating’: Delhi residents react as toxic smog blankets city – video

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Pollution in Delhi has reached its worst levels so far this year, at almost 400 times the amount deemed healthy. A week on from Diwali, the thick brown smog that shrouded the city after the festival has shown no sign of shifting. One local said the pollution was so bad it burned his nose and throat, making simple activities such as jogging difficult

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Flights diverted in Delhi as toxic smog hits worst levels of 2019

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Car fumes, industrial emissions and smoke from farms have contributed to pollution crisis

Pollution in Delhi has reached its worst levels so far this year, at almost 400 times the amount deemed healthy, causing planes to be diverted away from the city.

A week on from Diwali, the thick brown smog that shrouded the city after the festival has shown no sign of shifting. On Friday a public health emergency was declared and Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the city had turned into a “gas chamber”.

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Redesigning Delhi’s Champs Élysées: ‘It represents all that’s complex about urban India’

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From heaving traffic and dense crowds to car-free and tranquil: that’s the vision for Chandni Chowk. But is it achievable?

The Champs Élysées is one of the most famous streets in the world, but you could say the French were beaten to it by the Mughals. About 15 years before the avenue was laid out in 1667 in Paris, India’s Mughal emperor Shah Jehan built a grand mile-long street in his capital to reflect the glory of the empire at its height.

It ran from Fatehpuri mosque at one end to the colossal Red Fort at the other and was lined with trees, elegant mansions, mosques and gardens. Provisions for the Red Fort, the imperial residence, were carried down the boulevard by elephants, camels and horse-drawn carriages.

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Lunar eclipse 2019: from Australia to the UK, stargazers enjoy bright side of the moon

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Photographers from Sydney to Brasilia capture July’s stunning partial lunar eclipse

Stargazers around the world have enjoyed a view of a global lunar eclipse, delighting people from Dehli to Dublin.

The partial eclipse was visible in nearly every part of the world except for North America and the polar climes of Greenland and northern Russia.

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‘It’s stifling at home’: why free metro travel offers a lifeline for Delhi’s women

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City authorities say positive discrimination will make journeys safer and help low-income families

As a politics student, Sonakshi Dogra has given the bold new plan by the Delhi government to let all women ride free on the metro and buses a thorough going-over. “It’s ridiculous. Why favour women this way? What about male students and working men? Women can’t ask for gender equality and then support inequality on public transport,” she said firmly.

Dogra was about to enter Ashram metro station with three male friends, also students at the same university. They spend about 4,000 rupees (£45) each a month on transport.

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