Gunmen Target Second Student Leader in Bangladesh; Dhaka-Delhi Ties Hit By Unrest; How a Bengaluru Case Helped Make Guilty Pleas Routine in NIA Prosecutions
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December 22, 2025
Siddharth Varadarajan
After renaming the law governing the official employment guarantee for rural workers, is the Modi government moving to eliminate the Mahatma from currency notes? “Despite official denials, the first round of discussions has already happened at a high level. This is no longer mere speculation. Removing Gandhi from our currency is part of a larger attempt to rewrite the symbols of the nation,” John Brittas, a CPI(M) ML from Kerala, told the New Indian Express.
A second student leader has been targeted by unidentified assassins in Bangladesh. Motaleb Shikder of the National Citizens Party was shot in the head in Khulna and is reportedly in critical condition.
Bangladesh is suspending the issuing of visas from New Delhi following the arrival of protestors outside the gates of its high commission in the Indian capital. The MEA has rejected – as “misleading propaganda” – reports that protesters had tried to “breach the fence or create a security situation” at the high commission.
The Bangladeshi foreign ministry retorted that the “miscreants” were “allowed to carry out their activities” in front of the high commission and ‘create panic among its personnel’. It also called Das’s killing “an isolated attack” that New Delhi was ‘attempting to depict’ as an ‘attack on minorities’ and that the police had promptly made arrests. “The intercommunal situation in Bangladesh is better than in many other parts in South Asia,” it wrote.
Local police said that Das was first forced to resign from his garments factory and then handed over to a mob, which beat him to death, hung his body from a tree and set it ablaze. The mob charged him with blasphemy but the accusation is “extremely vague”, Prothom Alo quotes Rapid Action Battalion commander Naimul Hasan as saying. As of Saturday ten people were arrested.
Meanwhile, India has suspended operations at its visa applications centre in Chattogram after the facility was attacked by people amid protests over Hadi’s killing.
A new official residence for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, being constructed by Larsen & Toubro as part of the Central Vista project, has seen key details withheld by the Centre on grounds of national security. Despite tens of thousands of crores of taxpayers’ money being spent, the Modi government argued that the Indian public knowing the amount being spent to make a brand new official accommodation for the prime minister “will affect the sovereignty, integrity and security of India”, reports BBC.
Media reports citing government officials estimated in 2022 that the project would cost Rs 467 crore. The two-storeyed structure is planned to span over 36,000 square feet, with an additional 21,000 square feet designated for basement parking, while details of a reportedly planned nuclear shelter have not been disclosed. Earlier cost estimates for the Central Vista redevelopment – excluding the Prime Minister’s Office complex and the Prime Minister’s residence – were subsequently revised upward by an expert panel, even as concerns over transparency and escalating costs continue to be raised.
Four days after New Delhi signed a free trade deal with Oman, India on Monday announced that it had concluded talks for a free trade agreement with New Zealand. This deal, which was announced during New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s Delhi visit, would remove tariffs on all of India’s exports to the island country, and reduce or eliminate duties on 95% of New Zealand’s exports to India, excluding certain agricultural products. The pact – which comes as there has been no respite from Washington’s unprecedented 50% tariffs on Indian goods – will have to be signed by parliament in Wellington, which is not a given due to a prominent coalition partner’s opposition to it, notes Reuters.
The prime minister’s office sends a chadar (shawl) to the Ajmer Sharif dargah every year, but Hindu sena chief Vishnu Gupta moved the Supreme Court seeking that the PMO does not make the offering this time because an Ajmer court is hearing a petition (his petition) seeking a survey of the dargah in light of his claim that a temple exists underneath it. Chief Justice Surya Kant today declined to list Gupta’s plea for a same-day hearing.
In Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh, a meat shop owner and his family have alleged that he was attacked by vigilantes on Saturday on the false grounds that he was transporting beef. Police have arrested two people and sent samples of the meat to a lab.
But Hindutva groups aren’t the only ones looking to impose their religious restrictions on other people. Punjab’s Aam Aadmi Party government has declared the walled city of Amritsar in addition to the Talwandi Sabo and Anandpur Sahib towns as ‘holy cities’, which means that meat, tobacco and alcohol cannot be sold here.
And in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur, Hindu right-wing and Christian groups clashed on two occasions over the former’s allegations of conversion. One case reportedly involved the Bajrang Dal, whose parent organisation, the Vishva Hindu Parishad, has made no bones about its opposition to Hindus participating in Christmas cheer. Its most recent bid to this effect invokes ‘cultural awareness’ to oppose inter-faith mingling. “This issue is not about
