Sambhal Panel Echoes BJP's ‘Turk v. Pathan’ Line; V-P Asks Govt to Consider Telling Shah to Come to Parliament; Bombay HC Convicts Ex-Tehelka Editor of Rape, Castigates Judge For Manifest Misogyny
In today's Long Cable | When competitors became citizens: the exam, the protest and the work of democracy
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
August 6, 2026
Anirudh S.K.
The deadly violence that erupted in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal in November 2024 was “pre-planned” and primarily the result of a “conspiracy” hatched by the town’s Samajwadi Party MP Zia-ur-Rahman Barq, by chairperson of the Shahi Jama Masjid’s managing committee Zafar Ali and others, the state government-formed judicial commission has alleged. Unlike claims – including from the opposition and the mosque management committee – that the police fired bullets at protesters on November 24, the commission said that the police did not fire live rounds. The Muslim men who were killed, it said echoing the BJP’s line, succumbed to “crossfire by miscreants … belonging to the Turk and Pathan Muslim communities”. It also accuses Barq of provoking the town’s Muslims into thinking that the ‘Jama Masjid was in imminent danger and Hindus were going to dismantle the same’.
One will recall that the rioting took place while the authorities conducted a ‘survey’ of the Jama Masjid following (now familiar) claims by some Hindu petitioners that the mosque was once a Hindu temple. The survey that day was the second of its kind – five days prior, the initial survey was conducted with unusual alacrity, just hours after the trial court ordered it. It also occurred against the background of similar suits filed by Hindutva activists and their results, including puja being performed in a sealed basement of the Gyanvapi Masjid. Chief minister Yogi Adityanath later went on record as saying that Sambhal’s Muslims ought to surrender the mosque to Hindus if the evidence reveals the existence of a temple in its place.
For his part, Barq on Thursday denied the panel’s allegations. “Why will people who were apparently out to save the mosque fire at their own people?” he asked. Omar Rashid reports.
Opposition MPs continued sloganeering over the alleged theft at the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and the conspicuous absence of Union home minister Amit Shah from parliament more than two weeks after the Delhi police crackdown on protesting youth. As parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju and Rajya Sabha leader of opposition Mallikarjun Kharge bickered over what the latter can or cannot raise in the House, chairman and Vice President C.P. Radhakrishnan in a rare move asked the government to consider the opposition’s demand that Shah come to parliament. “As a parliamentary affairs minister you can echo the sentiments of the opposition to the home minister,” he told Rijiju.
Proclaiming “grassroots mobilisation, democratic reforms and mass public awakening” as its immediate aims in the wake of Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, the Cockroach Janta Party has announced that it will embark on a countrywide listening tour named ‘Kya Bolti Public’ (What Says the Public) starting next month. It will use the tour’s findings to shape a charter focussing on education reform, the education-to-employment pipeline and institutional accountability, the CJP said, clarifying that for now it does not intend to morph into a political party.
