NEW DELHI: For decades, stories from India’s Dalit community have remained largely untold even as millions of its people suffered widespread mistreatment and violence.
Previously known as “untouchable,” Dalits are the lowest stratum of India’s Hindu caste system. The group accounts for 300 million people, or about 20 percent of the Indian population.
Although some members of the community have managed to reach high ranks, most remain marginalized and are unable to escape the cycle of poverty they have been trapped in for centuries.
Hoping that telling their stories would help improve their lives made Meena Kotwal, a 33-year-old journalist brought up in the slums of New Delhi, start a news platform focused on the group.
The Mooknayak, or “leader of the voiceless,” was launched online two years ago.
“I started the paper in anger and launched the online edition in 2021…After working at the BBC for two years, from 2017 to 2019, I started looking for jobs in the Indian media, but I could not get any good offers. I tried some freelancing, but most of the stories I would pitch would get rejected,” Kotwal told Arab News.
“Being a woman and a Dalit with her own voice would not be appreciated by those places where I applied for jobs. Then I thought of The Mooknayak to tell not only my story but also stories that the mainstream media would not run.”
The publication is named after a biweekly newspaper founded over a century ago by Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, a social reformer who championed Dalit rights and was one of the main architects of the Indian Constitution, which enshrined a formal ban on caste discrimination.
Kotwal’s publication is not only an online newspaper but also a YouTube channel, with 50,000 subscribers.
“The idea behind starting The Mooknayak was to pay back to society whatever I have learned,” she said.
The platform is run through crowdfunding and employs Dalits and members of other marginalized groups. Even though it faces financial challenges, Kotwal vows to keep it going.
“I will not allow this website to close in my lifetime, no matter how much financial stress I have to go through. I have to keep the movement going that Ambedkar started,” she said.
“I want my little daughter to grow in a better environment and in a better society.”
The Mooknayak tells underreported stories, which eventually lead officials to intervene — to connect a Dalit village to the power grid, to address cases of violence, and so on.
Such stories are usually missed by the mainstream media.
“Mainstream media largely ignores Dalit concerns,” Rajat Kumar, a Dalit lawyer from the northern state of Haryana, told Arab News.
“Even after seven decades since India became a republic, discrimination against Dalits is rampant. The situation in some villages is as bad as it was 200 years ago.”
This is what The Mooknayak is trying to change, and its founder believes that will happen as stories of the marginalized are finally being told.
“History will change,” Kotwal said. “So far, history was written by only one kind of people, and now it is being written by those who themselves suffered in history.”
Dalit journalist takes aim at changing history with stories of India’s marginalized
https://arab.news/ztxbt
Dalit journalist takes aim at changing history with stories of India’s marginalized

- Stories from Dalit community are underreported by mainstream media
- The Mooknayak, or ‘leader of the voiceless,’ was launched online in 2021
Vietnamese tycoon’s jail term reduced in $146 million stock fraud

- Trinh Van Quyet, who owned the FLC empire of luxury resorts, golf courses and budget carrier Bamboo Airways, was given the lengthy jail term in August after a trial
Trinh Van Quyet, who owned the FLC empire of luxury resorts, golf courses and budget carrier Bamboo Airways, was given the lengthy jail term in August after a trial.
Quyet and 49 others including his two sisters and four stock exchange officials were punished for fraud, stock market manipulation, abuse of power and publishing incorrect stock market information.
After a 10-day hearing in Hanoi, the appeal court dropped Quyet’s three-year term for market manipulation and cut his 18-year sentence for fraud to seven years.
The appeal court gave several other defendants reduced jail terms on Thursday.
Its ruling comes after the tycoon’s family paid nearly $96 million in compensation for the losses.
According to the indictment in August, Quyet set up several stock market brokerages and registered dozens of family members, ostensibly to trade shares.
Police said while orders to buy shares were placed in hundreds of trading sessions — pushing up the value of the stock – they were canceled before being matched.
The court said there were 25,000 victims of the fraud as Quyet illegally pocketed more than $146 million between 2017 and 2022.
The appeal court said it had received 5,000 letters asking for a reduction of punishment for Quyet “from the victims, FLC staff, some associations and local authorities.”
The case is part of a national corruption crackdown that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam’s business elite in recent years.
Ecuador’s most-wanted gang leader ‘Fito’ captured

- Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, known as Fito, escaped custody in Ecuador in early 2024
- American prosecutors charged him, in absentia, with seven counts of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms-related crimes
QUITO: Ecuador’s president announced Wednesday that the country’s most-wanted fugitive, Los Choneros gang leader “Fito,” had been recaptured over a year after his escape from prison triggered a wave of violence.
“We have done our part to proceed with Fito’s extradition to the United States, we are awaiting their response,” Daniel Noboa wrote on X.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, known as Fito, escaped custody in Ecuador in early 2024 and American prosecutors charged him, in absentia, with seven counts of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms-related crimes, including weapons smuggling.
Macias Villamar’s January 2024 escape resulted in a surge of gang-related violence in Ecuador that lasted days and left about 20 people dead.
Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency in nearly a third of its provinces to quell the violence, but the drug lord was at-large until Wednesday’s announcement.
The months-long manhunt ended with the president stating Fito was in the custody of special military forces fighting narcotics trafficking.
The army and police reported that he was captured during a 10-hour operation in Manta, a fishing port in western Ecuador considered a stronghold for his gang.
Fito’s hideout evoked scenes from a movie thriller — local media reported that officers lifted a trap door in floor tiles of a luxury home to discover the outlaw hiding in a bunker.
The US Embassy congratulated Quito on the arrest, posting in Spanish on its X account that Washington “supports Ecuador in its efforts to combat transnational crime for the security of the region.”
Ecuador, once a peaceful haven between the world’s two top cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, has seen violence erupt in recent years as enemy gangs vie for control and establish ties to Mexican and Colombian cartels.
Macias Villamar is the leader of Los Choneros, the leading criminal gang in a country plagued by organized crime.
Gang wars largely played out inside the country’s prisons, where Macias Villamar wielded immense control.
He had been held since 2011, serving a 34-year sentence for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.
When he escaped, Macias Villamar was also considered a suspect in ordering the assassination of presidential candidate and anti-corruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio.
In the hours after the drug lord’s escape, prison riots broke out and four police officers were taken hostage, where one was forced to read a threatening message to Noboa.
Armed men wearing balaclavas also took over a television station during a live broadcast, forcing the terrified crew to the ground and firing shots.
Soon after, Noboa announced the country was in a state of “internal armed conflict” and ordered the military and tanks into the streets to “neutralize” the gangs.
US prosecutors allege his gang worked with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel to control key drug trafficking routes between South America and the United States.
Ecuador’s government had offered a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture.
If convicted, Fito faces life in prison.
Trump officials to give first classified briefing to Congress on Iran strikes

- The classified briefing comes as the Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution that would require congressional approval if Trump decides to strike Iran again
- Democrats, and some Republicans, have said that the White House overstepped its authority when it failed to seek the advice of Congress
WASHINGTON: Senators are set to meet with top national security officials Thursday as many question President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three Iranian nuclear sites — and whether those strikes were ultimately successful.
The classified briefing, which was originally scheduled for Tuesday and was delayed, also comes as the Senate is expected to vote this week on a resolution that would require congressional approval if Trump decides to strike Iran again. Democrats, and some Republicans, have said that the White House overstepped its authority when it failed to seek the advice of Congress and they want to know more about the intelligence that Trump relied on when he authorized the attacks.
“Senators deserve full transparency, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who said Tuesday that it was “outrageous” that the Senate and House briefings were postponed. A similar briefing for House members was pushed to Friday.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are expected to brief the senators on Thursday. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was scheduled to be at the Tuesday briefing, but will not be attending, according to a person familiar with the schedule.
The briefing could be contentious as questions have swirled around Trump’s decision to strike Iran and whether the attacks were successful. A preliminary US intelligence report found this week that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back only a few months, contradicting statements from Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the status of Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to two people familiar with the report. The people were not authorized to address the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
On Wednesday, Gabbard and Ratcliffe sent out statements backing Trump’s claims that the facilities were “completely and fully obliterated.” Gabbard posted on social media that “new intelligence confirms what @POTUS has stated numerous times: Iran’s nuclear facilities have been destroyed.”
She said that if the Iranians choose to rebuild the three facilities, it would “likely take years to do.”
Ratcliffe said in a statement from the CIA that Iran’s nuclear program has been “severely damaged” and cited new intelligence “from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”
Most Republicans have staunchly defended Trump and hailed the tentative ceasefire he brokered in the Israel-Iran war. House Speaker Mike Johnson even went as far as to question the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, which is intended to give Congress a say in military action.
“The bottom line is the commander in chief is the president, the military reports to the president, and the person empowered to act on the nation’s behalf is the president,” Johnson told reporters.
But some Republicans – including some of Trump’s staunchest supporters – are uncomfortable with the strikes and the potential for US involvement in an extended Middle East conflict.
“I think the speaker needs to review the Constitution,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky “And I think there’s a lot of evidence that our Founding Fathers did not want presidents to unilaterally go to war.”
Paul would not say if he is voting for the resolution by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, that would require congressional approval for specific military action in Iran. The resolution is likely to fail as 60 votes would be needed to pass it and Republicans have a 53-47 majority. But Kaine says it’s important to put the Senate on the record.
“You have a debate like this so that the entire American public, whose sons and daughters are in the military and whose lives will be at risk in war, get to see the debate and reach their own conclusion together with the elected officials about whether the mission is worth it or not,” Kaine said.
While he did not seek approval, Trump sent congressional leaders a short letter Monday serving as his official notice of the strikes, two days after the bombs fell.
The letter said that the strike was taken “to advance vital United States national interests, and in collective self-defense of our ally, Israel, by eliminating Iran’s nuclear program.”
Mississippi executes the longest-serving man on the state’s death row for 1976 killing

- Jordan was one of several on the state’s death row who sued the state over its three-drug execution protocol, claiming it is inhumane
PARCHMAN, Mississippi: The longest-serving man on Mississippi’s death row was executed Wednesday, nearly five decades after he kidnapped and killed a bank loan officer’s wife in a violent ransom scheme.
Richard Gerald Jordan, a 79-year-old Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, was put to death by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. The time of death was 6:16 p.m.
Jordan was one of several on the state’s death row who sued the state over its three-drug execution protocol, claiming it is inhumane.
The execution was the third in the state in the last 10 years; previously the most recent one was carried out in December 2022.
Jordan’s execution came a day after a man was put to death in Florida, in what is shaping up to be a year with the most executions since 2015.
Jordan, whose final appeals were denied without comment Wednesday afternoon by the US Supreme Court, was sentenced to death in 1976 for killing and kidnapping Edwina Marter.
Mississippi Supreme Court records show that in January of that year, Jordan called the Gulf National Bank in Gulfport and asked to speak with a loan officer. After he was told that Charles Marter could speak to him, he hung up. He then looked up the Marters’ home address in a telephone book and kidnapped Edwina Marter.
According to court records, Jordan took her to a forest and fatally shot her before calling her husband, claiming she was safe and demanding $25,000.
Edwina Marter’s husband and two sons had not planned to attend the execution. Eric Marter, who was 11 when his mother was killed, said beforehand that other family members would attend.
“It should have happened a long time ago,” Eric Marter told The Associated Press before the execution. “I’m not really interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
“He needs to be punished,” Marter said.
As of the beginning of the year, Jordan was one of 22 people sentenced in the 1970s who were still on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
His execution ended a decades-long court process that included four trials and numerous appeals. On Monday the Supreme Court rejected a petition that argued he was denied due process rights.
“He was never given what for a long time the law has entitled him to, which is a mental health professional that is independent of the prosecution and can assist his defense,” said lawyer Krissy Nobile, director of Mississippi’s Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, who represented Jordan. “Because of that his jury never got to hear about his Vietnam experiences.”
A recent petition asking Gov. Tate Reeves for clemency echoed Nobile’s claim. It said Jordan suffered severe PTSD after serving three back-to-back tours, which could have been a factor in his crime.
“His war service, his war trauma, was considered not relevant in his murder trial,” said Franklin Rosenblatt, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, who wrote the petition on Jordan’s behalf. “We just know so much more than we did 10 years ago, and certainly during Vietnam, about the effect of war trauma on the brain and how that affects ongoing behaviors.”
Marter said he does not buy that argument: “I know what he did. He wanted money, and he couldn’t take her with him. And he — so he did what he did.”
Ukraine, European rights body sign accord for tribunal on Russian aggression

- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset signed the accord in the French city of Strasbourg at the Council’s headquarters
Ukraine and the Council of Europe human rights body signed an agreement on Wednesday forming the basis for a special tribunal intended to bring to justice senior Russian officials for the crime of aggression against Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Council of Europe Secretary General Alain Berset signed the accord in the French city of Strasbourg at the Council’s headquarters.
“This is truly a very important step. Every war criminal must know there will be justice and that includes Russia. We are now boosting the legal work in a serious way,” Zelensky told the ceremony.
“There is still a long road ahead. Today’s agreement is just the beginning. We must take real steps to make it work. It will take strong political and legal cooperation to make sure every Russian war criminal faces justice, including (President Vladimir) Putin.”
Ukraine has demanded the creation of such a body since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, accusing Russian troops of committing thousands of war crimes. It is also intent on prosecuting Russians for orchestrating the invasion.
The 46-member Council of Europe, set up after World War Two to uphold human rights and the rule of law, approved the tribunal in May, saying it was intended to be complementary to the International Criminal Court and fill legal gaps in prosecutions.
The ICC has issued an arrest warrant against Putin, accusing him of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.