Why Did You Take His Devices, SC Asks Mahmudabad SIT; ‘Brutalism’ and ‘Religious Intolerance’ of Mughals in New in Class 8 Books; Jaishankar, Pak Foreign Minister Trade Barbs at SCO Meeting in China

Right Wing Putsch Against Secularism, Socialism; Rahul Gandhi Gets Bail in Defamation Case; Is There More to the Assam Evictions Than Meets the Eye?

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable

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Snapshot of the day

July 16, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

Why did the special investigation team, tasked with probing academic Ali Khan Mahmudabad's Facebook posts made during Operation Sindoor, expand its scope and take his devices, the Supreme Court asked today. Debby Jain quotes Justice Surya Kant as stating further: “We are asking why the SIT is, on the face of it, misdirecting itself.” Mahmudabad's lawyer Kapil Sibal also pointed out that the team had been asking his client about his international trips over the last ten years. Noting that he had appeared before the SIT four times already, Justice Kant told the police that “you don't require him, you require a dictionary”.

External affairs minister S Jaishankar and his Pakistani opposite number Ishaq Dar shared a platform yesterday – at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's foreign ministers' meeting in Tianjin – for the first