A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK
If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.
Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.
Snapshot of the day
September 15, 2026
Sidharth Bhatia, Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh S.K.
The Patiala House Court granted bail to Hindu right-wing influencer Swatantra Bhardwaj for three weeks in a case related to the alleged assault of the father of a teenage Dalit girl activist during the Cockroach Janta Party’s protests at Jantar Mantar. He was arrested on September 5. Judge Saurabh Pratap Singh Laler said that Bhardwaj was being released on interim bail because the court wanted to observe his conduct before considering his plea for regular bail, reports Bar & Bench. The court’s 17-page order highlighted several shortcomings in the police investigation. It noted that allegations of caste-based abuse were not included when the FIR was initially registered and surfaced about 10 weeks later.
Bhanu Tatak has been protesting the Modi government’s plans to build a megadam on the Siang river – as the Brahmaputra’s main stream is known in Arunachal Pradesh – and now the CBI has lodged an FIR against her alleging that she received foreign funding without a mandatory certificate under the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. Arvind Gunasekar reports that the agency has accused Tatak of illegally receiving over Rs 17 lakh in foreign funding and that the protests against the Siang megadam “adversely [affect the] economic and strategic interests of the country”. Last year Tatak had condemned the authorities for preventing her from travelling to Ireland in connection with cases against her over the protest. She is legal adviser for the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum.
About a month after parliament passed the Taxation and Other Laws (Amendment) Bill that paved the way for a merchant discount rate on some UPI transactions, the finance ministry today has announced how much MDR will be charged and when. Person-to-merchant (P2M) UPI transactions worth over Rs 2,000 will attract a 0.4% MDR. P2M transactions of more than Rs 2,000 in essential and thin-margin sectors like the railways, telecom and fuel will see flat Rs 5 MDR. Person-to-person UPI transactions will remain free, and small merchants like vendors on the street too shall pay no MDR if they receive less than Rs 1 lakh a month via UPI under the person-to-person-merchant category.
“Banks have been advised to ensure that merchants do not pass MDR charges on to customers,” the ministry said. MDR levied is to be distributed among banks, payment service providers and UPI service providers.
The backlash against the Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) in France is refusing to die down. La Marne, a prominent French news outlet, reports that
