Dhaka Summons Indian Envoy After VHP’s Protests Outside its Delhi Embassy; Court Dismisses UP Govt’s Motion to Withdraw Case Against Alleged Lynchers; I Stopped Indo-Pak Nuclear Conflict Claims Trump
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December 23, 2025
Sidharth Bhatia
A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Surajpur near Dadri dismissed the state government’s motion to withdraw its case against the 14 men accused of lynching Mohammad Akhlaq over ten years ago for allegedly eating and storing beef. India Today reports that the court deemed the state government’s application to be “irrelevant and baseless”, ordered daily hearings and set the date for the next hearing as January 6. Among those accused in the case is Vishal Rana, a son of local BJP leader Sanjay Rana. The lawyer representing Akhlaq’s family called the decision a major victory for his clients.
Around 400 demonstrators, including people linked with the Vishva Hindu Parishad and its youth wing the Bajrang Dal, gathered near the Bangladeshi high commission in Delhi today to condemn the lynching of 25-year-old garment worker Dipu Das in Mymensingh over the weekend. In this second protest in front of the high commission in three days, demonstrators reportedly broke through one line of barricades and shouted slogans including ‘Yunus sarkar hosh mein aao [Wake up, Yunus government]’ and ‘Hindu hatya band karo [stop killing Hindus]’. A protest was also held by people raising saffron flags near the Bangladeshi deputy high commission in Kolkata. In response, Dhaka summoned India’s high commissioner Pranay Verma, and its foreign ministry decried what it called the “premeditated violence or intimidation against diplomatic establishments”.
Former Uttar Pradesh BJP MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar’s life sentence for raping a 17-year-old girl in 2017 shall be suspended until his appeal against the verdict is disposed of, a bench of the Delhi high court ruled today. He is to pay a bond of Rs 15 lakh and ‘three sureties of like amount’, stay in Delhi until the appeal is decided, and not be within a five-kilometre radius of the survivor’s residence. Sengar was also sentenced to ten years’ prison in connection with the custodial death of the survivor’s father in 2018, and PTI notes that he has an appeal pending against that sentence too.
US President Donald Trump has once again said that he brought an end to the Indo-Pak conflict after Operation Sindoor. But he’s gone a step forward–his claim is that he stopped a ‘potential nuclear war’ between the two countries. What’s more, Pakistan’s Field Marshal – who Trump calls the prime minister – credited him with ‘saving a million lives’, he said. According to Trump, eight planes were shot down during the war.
Amid tension in Assam’s tribal-majority West Karbi Anglong district over
