India Says US Has Granted Six-Month Sanctions Waiver on Iran's Crucial Chabahar Port; Delhi Police Opposes Bail for Umar Khalid, Others; BJP Claim of ‘Hindus in Danger’ was Debunked by Patel in 1950

Labour Ministry Invokes Manusmriti and Other Ancient Texts in its New Draft Policy, India Denies UN Allegation of Mistreatment of Rohingya Refugees, Himanta Orders Treason FIR Over ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’

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Snapshot of the day

October 30, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

In quite a turnaround of events, India has claimed that the US administration has granted a six-month exemption for American sanctions applicable to Iran’s Chabahar port, which has been developed by New Delhi over the past decade as a crucial gateway for expanding trade and transit with the region. The move came more than a month after the Trump administration revoked a long-standing sanctions waiver that allowed India to establish a presence at the strategic Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman. “I can confirm that we have been granted exemption for a six-month period on the American sanctions that were applicable on Chabahar,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a weekly media briefing.

Even as Trump has been silent about the Quad and a prospective summit of its leaders in India during his Asia tour, Japan’s new and first woman prime minister Sanae Takaichi during a phone call with Modi yesterday afternoon said per Tokyo’s readout that their two countries would continue to work together to see through “a ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’, including through Japan-Australia-India-US (Quad)”. Trump’s silence has worried New Delhi and Tokyo that the Quad and the broader Indo-Pacific framework may no longer figure prominently in Washington’s agenda during the president’s second term.

As Asia’s leaders put on a masterclass in how to win over Trump this week, Modi was conspicuously missing. Menaka Doshi looks at what the prime minister’s absence says.

The Delhi Police has strongly opposed the release of student activists Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam, and three others booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots conspiracy case. The police have argued before the Supreme Court that the alleged offences involved a deliberate attempt to destabilise the state and therefore warranted “jail and not bail.” In a 177-page affidavit filed today, Delhi police contended that the violence that unfolded in February 2020 was not a spontaneous escalation of protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), but part of a coordinated “regime change operation” executed under the guise of civil dissent. The plan, according to the prosecution quoted by HT, aimed to ignite communal tensions during the visit of US President Donald Trump, so as to ‘internationalise’ the unrest and project the Government of India as discriminatory. Two days ago, a bench of justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria asked the enforcement agency to consider whether the accused, several of whom have spent nearly five years in judicial custody as undertrials, could be released on bail. The accused, Khalid, Imam, Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, and Shifa-ur-Rehman, have maintained that they were exercising their right to peaceful protest and that the “larger conspiracy” case is an attempt to criminalise dissent.

India has officially wound up its operations at the Ayni airbase in Tajikistan, marking the end of a two-decade-long military presence in Central Asia. The withdrawal, which reportedly took place in 2022, followed the expiry of a bilateral agreement between the two countries and joint operation of the base. The move has raised questions about India’s future strategic footprint in the region, especially as Russia and China consolidate their influence there. India had been running the Ayni airbase, also known as the Gissar Military Aerodrome, since 2002 under a deal with the Tajik government – making it a rare overseas military outpost for India and provided a crucial vantage point near Afghanistan and Pakistan. As The Print reports, the airbase had been taken on lease by India, but Tajikistan informed New Delhi that the lease would not be extended once it expired.

A UN special rapporteur’s allegations that Indian authorities maltreated Rohingya refugees – including by deporting a number of them to Bangladesh and transferring others to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands – in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack are “blinkered”