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
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Snapshot of the day
September 8, 2026
Sidharth Bhatia, Kalrav Joshi & Anirudh S.K.
“On 13 September, I will complete six years in prison. When I try to think of this period as a measure of time, I find it difficult to comprehend. Inside prison, days blur into each other.”
Next week, Dr Umar Khalid will mark 2,192 days behind bars. Arrested in September 2020 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in the Delhi riots’ alleged “larger conspiracy” case, he remains incarcerated without trial after repeatedly being denied bail, even as courts, including the Supreme Court, have repeatedly denied him bail under a law whose sweeping powers have become a defining feature of the Modi government’s approach to dissent.
Writing from Tihar for The Quint, Khalid describes an ordinary day as a political prisoner – headcounts, cramped routines, small solidarities and the anxiety of indefinite imprisonment – while reflecting on youth protests, hope, changing seasons and how captivity distorts one’s relationship with time.
With fresh tensions in West Asia propelling the benchmark Brent oil to nearly $100 a barrel, the rupee today sustained its sharpest decline since late in July, closing at 94.8175 to the dollar, 0.35% lower than yesterday. Intervention by the RBI last week – which spent at least $8 billion to buttress the rupee – had helped the currency scale an over-two-month high but now, writes Jaspreet Kalra, “that rally has run into resistance on account of a renewed rise in oil prices and still-elevated hedging demand from local importers”. Last week also saw foreign portfolio investors turn net sellers for the first time since July.
The Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS)-Eiffel Tower controversy has only lifted the lid on deeper questions about the Gujarat-rooted sect’s regressive, misogynistic practices and the row is now threatening to travel well beyond the monument itself. Eiffel Tower workers shut the landmark in protest on Monday after female employees were allegedly sidelined and “made invisible” during a BAPS delegation’s visit, prompting an official investigation and condemnation from senior French politicians, across party lines.
The Ministry of External Affairs, meanwhile, now appears keen to keep some distance from an organisation with which
