India, Indonesia to Cooperate on Defence as Modi Picks Up Another Medal; US Indicts Lawrence Bishnoi for Nijjar Murder, Announces 'International Crackdown on India-Based Organized Crime Gangs'
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Snapshot of the day
July 7, 2026
Siddharth Varadarajan
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Indonesia today, a return visit for the one President Prabowo Subianto paid for Republic Day in 2025. The two leaders finalised an agreement on cooperation in the field of defence, including over the BrahMos missile system and Astra air-to-air missiles, as well as agreements on critical minerals, maritime security and digital payments, while agreeing to continue work on the long-pending Sabang port project in Aceh.
Modi, of course, also collected another award to add to his collection. The Bintang Adipurna “Medal of Honour’ is Indonesia’s highest honour. Unfortunately for him, Modi is not the first Indian prime minister to receive this award. “Previously, the same sign of respect was also bestowed upon the Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru, also for his great appreciation and role in strengthening the relationship between Indonesia and India, and his contribution as one of the pioneers and pioneers of the non-bloc movement,” the Indonesian media reported. “Nehru got it posthumously [in 1995], without having to wrangle it", the Congress’s Jairam Ramesh tartly observed.
Law enforcement authorities in the US, Canada and Europe “have arrested 24 defendants … connected to three India-based transnational organized crime groups charged with a litany of criminal acts, including the assassination in Canada in 2023” of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the US Justice Department said today in a press release.
“Among the crimes alleged in the indictment is the assassination of a prominent political and religious leader – identified in court documents as “H.S.N.” – from India’s Punjab state and who was living in Canada at the time of his death. [Lawrence] Bishnoi and [Goldy] Brar are charged with ordering this assassination, which occurred when two gunmen shot and killed [him] as he left a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia on June 18, 2023.
The indictments announced add a vital piece to the broad case Canada has built against the Indian government for Nijjar’s murder. Earlier this year, Ottawa officially accused the Bishnoi gang of ‘acting on behalf of the Indian government’.
Athar Khan, one of those accused in the Modi government’s widely condemned Delhi riots ‘conspiracy’ case and who was arrested on July 2, 2020, was denied bail today by the high court. Having heard his plea against the trial court denying him bail, a bench comprising Justices Prathiba Singh and Madhu Jain today ruled that Khan “cannot be held to be a mere local-level operator but one of the main conspirators who conspired to cause
