PANCHKULA, India: Several cities in north India were under a security lockdown Thursday ahead of a verdict in a rape trial involving a controversial and hugely popular spiritual leader.
Tens of thousands of followers of the flamboyant guru, or leader, of the quasi-religious sect Dera Sacha Sauda have gathered in the town of Panchkula where a special court is set to announce a verdict on Friday.
The guru, who calls himself Saint Dr. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan, has denied the charges of raping two of his female followers.
The case was investigated by India’s top agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation, and a special CBI court will announce the verdict.
While a security blockade has been put up around the court complex, beyond it thousands of followers squatted along the roads. Men and women, some with children and babies, had spread out blankets and bedsheets and settled down to wait for the verdict.
Nearly 6,000 police and paramilitary soldiers have spread out in Panchkula alone and thousands more have fanned out in nearby areas fearing violence in the event of a guilty verdict. More troops have been kept on standby.
In Panchkula and the neighboring city of Chandigarh three sports stadiums have been set aside to act as makeshift prisons in case of violence, police said.
Chandigarh has also sealed its border for the next two days to prevent the violence from spilling over.
The sect claims to have 50 million followers and runs a spiritual empire that promotes vegetarianism and campaigns against drug addiction.
Religious sects like the Dera Sacha Sauda have huge followings in India. It’s not unusual for leaders of these sects to often have small, heavily armed private militias protecting them.
In 2007 clashes between the Dera Sacha Sauda followers and members of the Sikh faith in north India had left at least three people dead.
In 2014 six people were killed as followers of another popular religious leader, guru Rampal, fought pitched battles with police who were attempting to arrest him for contempt of court after he repeatedly failed to appear in court in connection with a murder trial.
On Thursday police were checking all vehicles entering Haryana state where both the court house and the guru’s ashram are located. People carrying food and bedding, and therefore likely to be joining the swelling crowds around the courthouse, were being turned away.
Local administrators have asked that schools, colleges and offices remain closed Thursday and Friday. All public transport in and around the town will also remain off the roads.
Security lockdown in north India ahead of verdict in guru’s rape trial
Security lockdown in north India ahead of verdict in guru’s rape trial
Trump immigration enforcement memo targets migrants who entered legally under Biden
The process, known as “expedited removal,” had been applied only to people apprehended within 14 days of entering the country
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration is empowering federal immigration officers to consider whether to strip temporary legal status from migrants who entered through former President Joe Biden’s signature “parole” programs in an effort to ramp up deportations to record levels, according to a memo issued on Thursday.
The US Department of Homeland Security memo provides guidance for the use of a fast-track deportation process that the Trump administration reinstated earlier this week, suggesting officers focus on migrants who failed to request asylum within a one-year deadline after arriving in the US
The process, known as “expedited removal,” had been applied only to people apprehended within 14 days of entering the country and within 100 miles (160 km) of the border under Biden. On Tuesday, it was expanded nationwide and applied to all those who entered within two years.
President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders after returning to the White House on Monday intended to deter illegal immigration and position the US to deport millions of immigrants without legal status.
The Republican president says the moves are necessary after millions of immigrants entered the US under Biden, both crossing illegally and through Biden’s legal entry programs.
Some Democrats and advocates counter that Trump’s aggressive enforcement could target non-criminals, disrupt businesses and split apart families. Immigrant rights group Make the Road New York sued on Wednesday to block Trump’s expansion of the fast-track deportation process.
Some 1.5 million migrants entered the US from 2022 to 2024 through two Biden legal entry “parole” programs aimed at reducing illegal crossings, according to US government statistics. One program allowed migrants waiting in Mexico to schedule an appointment to request asylum at a legal border crossing. Another allowed Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans outside the US to enter by air if they had US sponsors and underwent vetting.
Trump ended those programs on Monday, leaving some migrants in Mexico
stranded and unsure of next steps. Migrants who might have entered legally could face riskier routes if they cross illegally and higher prices from smugglers.
The latest guidance allowing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to consider stripping active parole from people who entered in the past two years could face legal challenges, one former Biden official said.
ICE made some 500 arrests on Thursday, Fox News reported, about a third of which were people without criminal records. The agency’s daily average for arrests was 311 in fiscal year 2024 and 467 in fiscal year 2023.
Ras Baraka, the Democratic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, criticized ICE last night
for an enforcement action in his city that involved detaining US citizens and a military veteran.
University students lead a strike in Serbia as populist president plans a rally to counter protests
- Daily traffic blockades took place on Friday in various cities and towns in the Balkan nation
- “Let’s take freedom in our hands,” students told the citizens in their strike call
BELGRADE: A student-led strike closed down numerous businesses and drew tens of thousands into the streets throughout Serbia on Friday as populist President Aleksandar Vucic planned a big rally to counter persistent anti-government protests that have challenged his tight grip on power.
Daily traffic blockades took place on Friday in various cities and towns in the Balkan nation, held to commemorate the victims of a deadly canopy collapse which killed 15 people in November. Huge crowds later flooded the streets for noisy protest marches through the capital Belgrade and elsewhere in the country.
“Let’s take freedom in our hands,” students told the citizens in their strike call.
Many in Serbia believe the huge concrete canopy at a train station in the northern city of Novi Sad fell down because of sloppy reconstruction work that resulted from corruption.
Weeks-long protests demanding accountability over the crash have been the biggest since Vucic came to power more than a decade ago. He has faced accusations of curbing democratic freedoms despite formally seeking European Union membership for Serbia.
It was not immediately possible to determine how many people and companies joined the students’ call for a one-day general strike on Friday. They included restaurants, bars, theaters, bakeries, various shops and bookstores.
Vucic will gather his supporters in the central town of Jagodina later on Friday. He has announced plans to form a nationwide political movement in the style of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin that would help ensure the dominance of his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party.
The president and his mainstream media have accused the students of working under orders from foreign intelligence services to overthrow the authorities while pro-government thugs have repeatedly attacked protesting citizens.
No incidents were reported during the 15-minute traffic blockades on Friday that started at 11.52, the exact time of the canopy collapse in Novi Sad.
During a blockade last week in Belgrade, a car rammed into protesting students, seriously injuring a young woman.
Serbian universities have been blockaded for two months, along with many schools. A lawyers’ association also has gone on strike but it remained unclear how many people stayed away from work in the state-run institutions on Friday.
As well as Belgrade and Novi Sad, protest marches were also held Friday in the southern city of Nis and smaller cities, and even in Jagodina ahead of Vucic’s arrival.
“Things can’t stay the same anymore,” actor Goran Susljik told N1 regional television. “Students have offered us a possibility for a change.”
Serbia’s prosecutors have filed charges against 13 people for the canopy collapse, including a government minister and several state officials. But the former construction minister Goran Vesic has been released from detention, fueling doubts over the probe’s independence.
The main railway station in Novi Sad was renovated twice in recent years as part of a wider infrastructure deal with Chinese state companies.
Ukraine to evacuate more children from frontline villages
- “I have decided to start a mandatory evacuation of families with children” from around two dozen frontline villages and settlements, Donetsk region governor Vadym Filashkin said
- Around 110 children lived in the area affected
KYIV: Ukraine on Friday announced the mandatory evacuation of dozens of families with children from frontline villages in the eastern Donetsk region.
Russia’s troops have been grinding across the region in recent months, capturing a string of settlements, most of them completely destroyed in the fighting since Russia invaded in February 2022.
“I have decided to start a mandatory evacuation of families with children” from around two dozen frontline villages and settlements, Donetsk region governor Vadym Filashkin said on Telegram.
Around 110 children lived in the area affected, he added.
“Children should live in peace and tranquility, not hide from shelling,” he said, urging parents to heed the order to leave.
The area is in the west of the Donetsk region, close to the internal border with Ukraine’s Dnipropretovsk region.
Russia in 2022 claimed to have annexed the Donetsk region, but has not asserted a formal claim to Dnipropretovsk.
The order to leave comes a day after officials in the northeastern Kharkiv region announced the evacuation of 267 children from several settlements there under threat of Russian attack.
Trump to visit disaster zones in North Carolina, California on first trip of second term
- The president is also heading to hurricane-battered western North Carolina
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump is heading into the fifth day of his second term in office, striving to remake the traditional boundaries of Washington by asserting unprecedented executive power.
The president is also heading to hurricane-battered western North Carolina and wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles, using the first trip of his second administration to tour areas where politics has clouded the response to deadly disasters.
Kyiv says received bodies of 757 killed Ukrainian troops
- The exchange of prisoners and return of their remains is one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv
KYIV: Kyiv said Friday it had received the bodies of hundreds of Ukrainian troops killed in battle with Russian forces, in one of the largest repatriations since Russia invaded.
The exchange of prisoners and return of their remains is one of the few areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv since the Kremlin mobilized its army in Ukraine in February 2022.
The repatriation announced by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a Ukrainian state agency, is the largest in months and underscores the high cost and intensity of fighting ahead of the war’s three-year anniversary.
“The bodies of 757 fallen defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters said in a post on social media.
It specified that 451 of the bodies were returned from the “Donetsk direction,” probably a reference to the battle for the mining and transport hub of Pokrovsk.
The city that once had around 60,000 residents has been devastated by months of Russian bombardments and is the Kremlin’s top military priority at the moment.
The statement also said 34 dead were returned from morgues inside Russia, where Kyiv last August mounted a shock offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region.
Friday’s repatriation is at least the fifth involving 500 or more Ukrainian bodies since October.
Military death tolls are state secrets both in Russia and Ukraine but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed last December that 43,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed and 370,000 had been wounded since 2022.
The total number is likely to be significantly higher.
Russia does not announce the return of its bodies or give up-to-date information on the numbers of its troops killed fighting in Ukraine.
