UP Police Lodge Much-Delayed FIR in Ram Temple Funds Case; Adanis Enlist Ex-CJI, Other Bigwigs' Help Before DOJ; Global Military Spending Surges but India Bucks the Trend
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Snapshot of the day
June 25, 2026
Anirudh S.K.
Amidst sustained opposition criticism and fears that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Uttar Pradesh government’s inaction would expose its lack of intent, the state police was finally forced to lodge an FIR in connection with alleged irregularities involving Ram temple donations, over two weeks after the accusations blew up and 12 days after the special investigation team began its probe. The case names several lower-level employees, including Tinnu Yadav, a close associate of the temple trust’s general secretary Champat Rai, over allegations of theft. The Wire’s ground report is coming up soon. What do the families of the accused have to say? And what has the SIT been up to? The less said, the better.
Gautam and Sagar Adani’s lawyers enlisted such heavyweights as a former Chief Justice of India and an ex-Central Electricity Authority chairperson starting earlier this year to convince the Department of Justice to drop its criminal fraud case against them, according to their court filing asking a federal judge to approve the DOJ’s decision to dismiss its indictment. They also got a “securities law professor at Harvard Law School” and a “former SEC commissioner and acting chairman” to bolster their case. What exactly each expert said is not known, but the Adanis’ attorneys said they drew from the retired CEA chief’s analysis to deny the DOJ’s allegation that the Adanis paid or promised to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to Indian officials to get them to buy their solar power. The ex-CEA chief’s analysis supposedly supported the idea that these alleged payments “took place at or around the same time as documented, lawful and transparent price reductions” to Indian officials.
Who any of these big wheels are, is not known; so far six of the 20 living former CJIs – Justices B.R. Gavai, Sanjiv Khanna, R.M. Lodha, N.V. Ramana, T.S. Thakur and G.B. Pattanaik – speaking to Devirupa Mitra denied involvement in the matter. Incidentally, the Adanis’ filing shows that they kicked off their persuasion campaign soon after the Securities and Exchange Commission in DC complained that the Modi government was stalling the service of its summonses in its parallel civil case in the matter.
India and Pakistan held a fresh round of informal “Track 2” talks in Colombo and Bangkok earlier this week, which could potentially pave the way for a shift to formal “Track 1” engagement, reports Sidhant Sibal. The discussions reportedly focused on strengthening crisis-management mechanisms as well as preventing and managing future escalations. They also exchanged views on terrorism and water, while exploring ways to channel the discussions into formal government-level dialogue.
The meetings come even as official bilateral dialogue has remained suspended for several years. Neither New Delhi nor Islamabad has publicly acknowledged the backchannel engagements as The India Cable goes to press. (Meanwhile it has been noted that when US secretary of state Marco Rubio “announced” last year’s ceasefire, he claimed that India and Pakistan agreed to “start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site”, which New Delhi denied back then.)
Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the September BRICS summit in Delhi,
