Exhaustive checks done after Feb 7 mishap due to software glitch
Two months after the entire Tejas fleet was grounded following an accident on February 7, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has cleared the fighter jets for flying from tomorrow.
Exhaustive checks were ordered and a probe committee, comprising the IAF and public sector plane manufacturer Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), found that a software glitch had caused the accident. The Air Force is left with around 35 single-engine Tejas.
A jet had veered off the runway into an adjoining mud-ditch while it was in the process of taking off from a forward base along the western front. The pilot of the single-seater aircraft survived with injuries.
Sources said a “correction was required in the plane’s braking software, which had been carried out”.
Last week, HAL Chairman and Managing Director DK Sunil had told a group of mediapersons about the “technical solution”. “It was a software issue of the braking system not working on one of the jets,” said Sunil.
After the software was corrected and updated, it was tested under varied conditions before the fleet was cleared for flight again, said an official. Modern jets rely heavily on their on-board mission computers for combat and flying. This includes computer-aided firing, targeting, processing of radar signatures and operations. The software upgrade has been done jointly by the IAF and HAL. “A new software code sequence was not needed and it was only an upgrade,” the official said.
The exhaustive checks on the fleet included analysing the metallurgy of the under-carriage that holds the wheels, electro-magnetic system used for applying brakes and the software.
Tejas maintains one of the world’s best safety records among contemporary fighter aircraft, the HAL had said in a statement after the February 7 accident. It was the third such mishap involving the jet since its induction in 2016.
The jet faced its first crash near Jaisalmer in March 2024 when the plane crashed while returning from a firepower demonstration. The pilot had ejected safely. The second crash happened in November 2025 when the jet was involved in an aerobatic display at the Dubai Airshow. Wing Commander Namansh Syal had died in the accident.
UAE Demands Immediate $3.5 Billion Loan Repayment From Pakistan Amidst Middle East Conflict
Pakistan faces a precarious financial moment as it prepares to repay a $3.5 billion loan to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), amid soaring global oil prices that are exerting intense pressure on its foreign exchange reserves.
This repayment accounts for approximately 18% of Pakistan’s foreign currency reserves, imposing substantial strain on the nation’s external buffers and heightening fears for the stability of the Pakistani rupee.
As of 27 March, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) maintained reserves of $16.4 billion, barely enough to cover three months of imports.
The rationale for the UAE’s insistence on repayment remains shrouded in uncertainty. Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed speculation on 4 April, labelling it a “routine financial transaction” and minimising any potential political undertones.
Domestic media outlets indicate that talks over extending the loan terms may have collapsed.
In prior years, Pakistan leaned heavily on aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and allies like the UAE, China, and Saudi Arabia to shore up its economy.
Such assistance enabled the rebuilding of reserves and steadied the currency, which hovered between 278 and 282 to the dollar prior to the escalation of the Iran conflict.
Since early March, the rupee has held steady, though the benchmark KSE-100 Index has tumbled by 15%, mirroring wider market anxieties.
To counter the reserve drain, the SBP might resort to tough actions, such as curbing imports, hiking interest rates, or tapping commercial banks for extra funds.
The situation worsens with a $1.3 billion bond repayment looming to international creditors this month, alongside anticipation of a $1.2 billion IMF tranche.
The UAE’s refusal to roll over the loan—once a reliable practice from Pakistan’s Gulf partners—hints at a change in Abu Dhabi’s approach, timed with Islamabad’s growing alignment with Saudi Arabia.
Sajid Amin, deputy executive director at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), emphasised the UAE’s pivotal role in helping Pakistan fulfil IMF programme financing thresholds during tough times.
He noted that the government opted for repayment after failing to negotiate a long-term extension, even at the elevated cost of 6.5%, and suggested geopolitical influences could be at play.
Nevertheless, UAE firms persist in their investments in Pakistan. International Holding Co, based in Abu Dhabi, recently took a stake in First Women Bank Ltd.
Meanwhile, AD Ports Group inked a 25-year deal in 2024 for cargo operations with the Karachi Port Trust.
Pakistan has also floated proposals to hand over its airports to Middle Eastern investors.
Past attempts to swap portions of the UAE debt for equity, such as stakes in Fauji Foundation subsidiaries, form part of Islamabad’s wider efforts to handle its external debts.
New RIAC Chief Dmitry Trenin Urges Balanced Strategy In Russia’s Relations With India And China
Dr Dmitry Trenin, the newly elected president of the Kremlin-backed Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), has emphasised the importance of maintaining a positive balance in Russia’s relations with its two Asian strategic partners, India and China.
Speaking in his first press interview after assuming leadership of the think tank on 1 April, Trenin underscored the need to prevent external powers, particularly the United States, from exploiting India against China and, indirectly, against Russia.
He stressed that China, as Russia’s largest neighbour, deserves systematic attention, while India also requires deeper engagement beyond what he described as a positive but still superficial impression.
Trenin, aged 70, is a retired Soviet-Russian Army Colonel with extensive experience in global affairs. His career included involvement in US-Russian nuclear and space weapons negotiations and postings both within and outside the Soviet Union.
Notably, he became the first non-NATO senior research fellow at the NATO Defence College in Rome. He later joined the Carnegie Moscow Centre in 1994, eventually becoming its director, but was dismissed in 2022 for supporting the Kremlin’s Ukraine campaign.
In outlining his vision for RIAC, Trenin declared that Russia is an autocratic nation that does not obey external powers and will not allow the world to collapse. He pledged to inject new impetus into the council and to rise to the challenges of today’s turbulent and dramatic times, as well as those that lie ahead.
He argued that despite the apparent chaos and illogicality of current events, history shows that similar upheavals have occurred before. He compared the present situation to a world war, though he rejected the term ‘World War III’ as misleading, preferring instead to describe it as ‘a new world war’ distinct from the first two.
Trenin’s remarks reflect his broader strategic outlook, shaped by decades of involvement in defence and international affairs. His appointment to RIAC, which was established 15 years ago by a decree of then-President Dmitry Medvedev, signals a renewed effort to position the council as a leading forum for Russian foreign policy analysis.
RIAC serves as Russia’s counterpart to the Indian Council of World Affairs, highlighting the importance of intellectual and policy exchanges in shaping Moscow’s external relations.
By stressing the need for balance between India and China, Trenin has placed emphasis on managing Russia’s ties with both nations in a way that avoids confrontation and external manipulation. His comments suggest that Russia sees value in cultivating deeper ties with India while continuing to prioritise its strategic partnership with China.
At the same time, his framing of the current global turbulence as akin to a world war underscores the seriousness with which he views the international environment and the challenges facing Russia’s foreign policy establishment.
From Souring Skies To National Mission: Decoding The Resilience of India’s TEJAS Fighter Amidst Decades of Scrutiny
The Indian Air Force’s TEJAS fleet is scheduled to return to operational status on 8 April 2026, following a two-month grounding triggered by a “rude landing” in February, wrote Anand Singh of India Today.
This latest incident, which resulted in the pilot ejecting and the aircraft being written off, marks the third significant mishap for the platform in less than two years.
Previous accidents include a 2024 crash caused by fuel feed issues and a tragic November 2025 crash at the Dubai Air Show that claimed the life of Wing Commander Namansh Syal.
Following the February accident, HAL Chairman DK Sunil announced that the entire fleet of approximately 34 aircraft had been cleared for flight after the underlying issues were resolved.
However, these recurring setbacks have reignited a fierce national debate over whether Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has squandered decades of time and billions of crores on a “dud” project.
The program, which traces its origins back to the early 1980s under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, remains under intense pressure to prove its worth.
The return of the TEJAS is a matter of strategic urgency for India. With active conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, and persistent tensions with neighbours Pakistan and China, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is currently facing a critical shortage of fighter squadrons.
Currently, the IAF operates between 30 and 32 squadrons against a sanctioned strength of 42. Following the retirement of the MiG-21, the absence of the TEJAS has left analysts deeply concerned about India’s ability to manage a potential two-front threat.
Critics argue that a fighter designed to replace the MiG-21 is still only available in small numbers, with production further hampered by delays in engine supplies from General Electric (GE) in the United States.
While the question of whether HAL wasted time and money is blunt, experts suggest it is not entirely unfair given the slow ramp-up of production. Nevertheless, many argue that the program is a significant achievement despite self-inflicted delays and structural flaws.
Sandeep Unnithan, a senior defence journalist, suggests the slow pace stems from a flawed organisational structure where the user, the manufacturer, and the designer operated in isolated silos. He compares the TEJAS to India’s successful nuclear submarine project, noting that the Navy’s unified “all-under-one-umbrella” approach allowed for much smoother development. In contrast, the Air Force, HAL, and the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) often struggled to communicate effectively.
Air Marshal Philip Rajkumar (Retd) offers a different perspective, arguing that the 40-year timeline is misleading. He notes that serious work only truly began after 1993 following financial crises and reviews.
Despite the 1998 Pokhran-II sanctions that cut off Western technical assistance for critical systems like fly-by-wire, the first flight occurred in 2001.
He maintains that the 15-year span between full-scale development in 2004 and Final Operational Clearance in 2019 is comparable to major international projects like the Eurofighter Typhoon.
Retired HAL chief designer KP Singh also acknowledges the extended timeline but defends the effort, suggesting that while things took longer than they should have, there were valid reasons for the delays. Regarding the recent accidents, experts urge perspective.
Until 2024, the TEJAS had flown 50,000 accident-free hours. Unnithan notes that the Dubai crash was a high-risk display mishap rather than a design failure, while Rajkumar points out that the IAF used to lose 20 MiG-21s a year during the 1960s and 70s.
One of the project’s greatest regrets remains the failure of the indigenous Kaveri engine. Originally meant to power the TEJAS, it failed to meet thrust requirements and was delinked from the airframe in 2008.
While Unnithan calls this abandonment a “catastrophic mistake” compared to China’s massive investment in engine tech, Rajkumar highlights that the Kaveri effort was not a total loss. A marine version was successful, and the core engine is now being certified for the Ghatak stealth UCAV.
The most significant, albeit invisible, success of the TEJAS program is the creation of a domestic aerospace ecosystem. It has fostered a network of roughly 300 private companies capable of supplying high-tech components.
This foundation is considered more valuable than the aircraft itself. While early orders were too small to incentivise HAL to build multiple production lines, three lines are now being activated to deliver 30 aircraft annually.
Experts conclude that India has no choice but to persevere with the TEJAS. Since no nation will share “crown jewel” technologies like jet engine designs, the program must evolve into a unified national mission with strong political backing.
The TEJAS MK-1A is technically superior to the MiG-21, offering a generational leap in sensor fusion and situational awareness, and the upcoming MK-2 is expected to address remaining limitations in payload and stealth.
To call the aircraft a “dud” is to ignore the hard-won mastery of fighter design India has finally achieved.
India Today
Trump Says ‘A Whole Civilization Will Die Tonight’ Ahead of Iran Deadline; Iran Calls Him ‘Psychopath’
President Donald Trump has delivered a chilling warning to Tehran, stating that an entire civilisation could face total destruction tonight if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened by his 8:00 p.m. deadline. Speaking from the White House, the President suggested that failure to comply would result in a permanent loss for the nation, though he expressed a slim hope that “revolutionarily wonderful” developments might still occur.
The President’s latest ultimatum was issued via Truth Social, where he described the looming deadline as one of the most significant moments in global history. Despite the gravity of his threats, Trump noted that he does not desire such an outcome but believes it is the likely trajectory if Iran continues to defy his demands regarding the strategic shipping lane.
Throughout the week, the rhetoric has escalated sharply, with the President using expletive-laden social media posts to command Iranian leaders to “Open the F—in’ Strait.” He has specifically designated Tuesday as “Power Plant Day” and “Bridge Day,” signalling a shift in military strategy toward targeting Iran’s civilian infrastructure if the deadline passes without a resolution.
This aggressive stance was further reinforced during a Monday press conference, where Trump claimed that the Iranian state could be “taken out in one night.” When questioned by reporters about the legality of strikes on civilian targets, the President dismissed concerns regarding potential war crimes, stating he was “not at all” worried about such charges.
The Iranian Embassy in Turkey posted on X: A “psychopath’s threat” won’t destroy what time itself could not. “Alexander burned it. The Mongols ravaged it. History tested it. Iran endures.”
Vice President J.D. Vance, speaking from Hungary, attempted to strike a more diplomatic tone, expressing hope for a successful resolution through ongoing negotiations. However, the Vice President remained firm that while the U.S. desires a swift end to the conflict, the ultimate conclusion rests entirely on the decisions made by the Iranian government.
On the ground, military action is already intensifying. Reports indicate that the U.S. military has carried out strikes on military installations on Kharg Island. This location is of vital importance to Tehran, as it serves as the hub for approximately 90% of Iran’s oil exports, hitting the nation’s primary economic lifeline just hours before the deadline.
The current crisis was sparked by the shooting down of a U.S. Air Force F-15E fighter jet over Iran last Friday. While one pilot was recovered shortly after the crash, the second crew member was rescued in a high-stakes mission over the weekend.
Trump has hailed the rescue as a historic victory, despite critics pointing out that the initial attack on the jet contradicts his assertions that Iran’s military capabilities have been neutralised.
Diplomatic efforts appear to be at a standstill after the United States rejected a 10-point peace plan proposed by Tehran on Monday. While the President acknowledged the proposal as a move in the right direction, he insisted that any final agreement must guarantee the “free traffic of oil” and address U.S. sovereignty concerns over the Strait of Hormuz.
Agencies
Localised Su-57 Manufacturing: A Strategic Pathway To Enhancing India’s Fifth-Generation Air Power
Retired Group Captain Uttam Kumar Devnath, a veteran of the Indian Air Force, has put forward a compelling case for the licensed production of Russia’s Su-57 stealth fighter within India, according to a report by Sputnik India.
He suggests that such an initiative would not only drastically reduce the unit costs of the aircraft but also significantly accelerate the timelines for their induction into service. This proposal comes at a time when the Indian Air Force is looking to bolster its combat capabilities with advanced fifth-generation platforms.
The veteran highlights that India possesses a wealth of proven expertise in handling Russian aviation platforms, citing the long history of operating the MiG series and the successful licensed production of the Su-30MKI.
This existing technical foundation would allow for a progressive indigenisation process. According to Devnath, Indian industry could realistically scale its contribution from an initial 30 per cent to as much as 70 per cent, covering critical areas such as avionics, mission software, and complex airframe structures.
Beyond the initial purchase, the report emphasises the substantial economic benefits of domestic manufacturing. Local production would lead to significant savings across the entire lifecycle of the aircraft, including acquisition, long-term sustainment, and the overall cost-per-flying-hour.
By reducing dependence on imported components and foreign technicians, India could ensure a more cost-effective and sustainable fleet management strategy for its frontline fighters.
This move would be fully aligned with the national ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ (Self-Reliant India) initiative, which seeks to transform the country into a global manufacturing hub for defence equipment.
Furthermore, the veteran argues that the Su-57 project could serve as a vital technological bridge to India’s own indigenous Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) program. The skills and infrastructure developed while building the Su-57 could directly feed into the success of the domestic stealth fighter project.
A key advantage noted by the retired officer is the flexibility offered by Russian defence partnerships compared to those with Western nations. He observes that Russian platforms generally allow for a much higher degree of localisation and technology transfer.
If New Delhi decides to re-engage with the Su-57 program through a domestic manufacturing lens, it could represent a game-changing shift in India’s strategic posture and industrial capability.
WARS today do not end. They linger, mutate and justify themselves. That is not strategy. That is failure by design.
I have seen wars end. And I have seen them refuse to.
In the military, we are trained for the start. We study the opening gambit, the kinetic surge, the breach and the suppression of the enemy’s will. We understand escalation. But there is a quieter discipline that once defined strategy and is now fading. The art of the stop.
Conflicts that ended well had a simple anatomy. Not total annihilation, but clarity of objective. Someone had the spine to decide the mission was over. Not because the enemy vanished, but because the job was done. Force applied. Threshold reached. Then came the hardest command. Stop. Go home.
Today, that spine is missing. No one decides. Conflicts drift.
A war without an end state is not a campaign. It is drift with casualties.
The Indian gold standard
We do not have to search for a benchmark. In 1971, India executed one of the most decisive campaigns in modern history. It was not just victory. It was the restraint that followed. We did not linger. We did not convert success into occupation. We knew what done looked like.
In the Maldives in 1988, we intervened, restored order and withdrew. No residue. No secondary agenda. Maximum impact, minimum footprint.
Even in Sri Lanka, complex as it was, we exercised the discipline to disengage when returns diminished.
India’s restraint lay not only in what it did, but in what it chose not to strike. Infrastructure was not treated as a target. It carries the life of a society. To destroy it is to punish the very people in whose name wars are often justified.
In each case, ends defined means. Today, means risk becoming ends in themselves.
Drift dressed as doctrine
We call it hybrid war. We call it grey zone. We call it calibrated ambiguity. From the field, it looks simpler. Drift, dressed as doctrine.
In West Asia, objectives shift while operations continue. One day promises decisive victory. The next speaks of a longer campaign. Negotiations, pauses and escalation overlap until words lose meaning.
In Europe, conflict has stretched into years. Objectives have accumulated layers of geopolitics until clarity dissolves. Fighting continues not because the end state is defined, but because no one will define it.
The conflict sustains itself.
The tea stall reality
Strategy forgets who pays for drift. The strategist speaks of theatre. The citizen pays for duration.
The man at the tea stall does not read doctrine. He feels rising prices from broken supply chains that never stabilise because wars never settle. He sees families trapped in conflict zones with no exit. He lives with uncertainty that seeps into the national psyche.
When a war has a horizon, society mobilises and recovers. When it has none, the economy and spirit bend around it.
If success is never defined, it is never achieved. Failure becomes the quiet default.
The paradox of capability
We have never had more tools to end conflict, yet we are worse at finishing them. Drones, cyber operations and precision strikes allow pressure below declared war. We can sustain a condition of neither peace nor war indefinitely.
That is the trap. Capability has replaced decision.
To stop requires accountability. It requires stating what was gained and what was lost. It demands ownership. It is easier to say the situation is evolving than to declare an outcome.
The measure of force
Force must be applied with clarity and purpose. But its legitimacy lies in discrimination.
If a slap is enough, why the cane? If the objective is correction, why punish the class for the fault of one.
Infrastructure is not a battlefield. It is society’s bloodstream. Strike it, and you are no longer shaping the conflict. You are punishing the future.
Every use of force leaves a residue, not just on the target, but on the initiator. Excess shapes memory, perception and resistance. What is gained in immediacy is often lost in legitimacy.
A calibrated response corrects behaviour. An indiscriminate one scars generations. Those scars return.
Humanity as the global common
Covid-19, climate and conflict have revealed a simple truth. No crisis remains local.
A war in one region disturbs food, fuel, trade and trust across continents.
Humanity is now the ultimate global common. It survives not on declarations, but on restraint in action. If it fractures, there is no rear area left.
Win the war before the war. And if that is not possible, design for termination.
The laws we never updated
War has never been lawless. It has always carried limits.
The Geneva Conventions established the baseline. Protect the wounded. Protect prisoners of war. Protect civilians. Distinguish between combatant and non-combatant.
The Additional Protocol-I recognised that war was changing. Civilians would no longer remain distant. Distinction and proportionality became central to legitimacy.
Civilian objects shall not be attacked. Systems indispensable to survival such as food, water and essential infrastructure are protected.
But the battlefield has moved faster than the law.
Today, power grids collapse cities. Data networks carry economies. Supply chains sustain nations. These are not secondary systems. They are society itself.
And yet, they are increasingly treated as targets.
We do not need new principles. We need the discipline to apply the existing ones to the wars we are actually fighting.
The minimum we owe
Across centuries, from Sun Tzu through Chanakya, Machiavelli and Clausewitz, strategy was never about endless conflict. It was about purpose, application and termination.
Restraint is not weakness. It is control.
Wars may begin in strategy. They must end in discipline.
If we cannot design how wars end, we will inherit conflicts that never do.
‘Forced to shed blood’: Unseen files in Lahore archives reveal Bhagat Singh’s literary genius
Ninety-seven years ago today, a 20-year-old Indian revolutionary walked into the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi, threw two non-lethal smoke bombs into the chamber and stood his ground. He did not run. He raised the slogan “Inquilab Zindabad!” and surrendered–choosing the courtroom over escape, so that his voice and his cause could reach every corner of a colonised country.
That act of April 8, 1929, when Bhagat Singh and his comrade Batukeshwar Dutt hurled bombs specifically engineered to create noise rather than casualties–their stated purpose being to make the “deaf ears” of the British administration hear the voice of Indian youth–set in motion a chain of events that would end on the gallows of Lahore Central Jail on March 23, 1931. He was 23.
On the 97th anniversary of that surrender, 165 files locked inside a heavily guarded civil secretariat in Lahore–examined for the first time by Professor Satvinder S Juss of King’s College, London, who travelled to Lahore over 2017-20 to dig deep into the Pakistan archives–have yielded disclosures never seen before. The files not only revealed a revolutionary, but a man of rare intellectual depth, legal brilliance, poetic sensibility and extraordinary moral courage.
Bhagat Singh’s story begins with the shooting in December 1928 of British police officer John Saunders in Lahore–retaliation for the fatal lathicharge on Lala Lajpat Rai. Bhagat Singh’s group plastered posters across the city claiming responsibility. The posters were signed in Bhagat Singh’s name. What they said has lain buried in the Lahore files for nearly a century.
Prof Juss found the poster, which stated: “We are sorry to admit that we who attach so great a sanctity to human life, we who dream of a glorious future, when man will be enjoying perfect peace and full liberty, have been forced to shed human blood.”
As he read those words, Prof Juss told The Tribune over the phone from London, he was “stopped dead in his tracks by the literary quality of these words”. “How many people today in India are able to write like this? How many even in the West can produce something of this poetic quality, this lyricism, that goes straight to the heart? That was utterly remarkable.”
Hunger strike films never explained
Every film and popular account of Bhagat Singh mentions his hunger strike in prison. None has explained what it was actually about–because the answer lay in the files.
When Bhagat Singh and his associates were held as undertrials, the British administration denied them access to newspapers as well as a proper diet. Under the jail rules of the time, any literate undertrial was entitled to one daily newspaper–The Tribune, if they read English, or a vernacular paper in their own language. This right was being withheld for Bhagat Singh.
According to Prof Juss, Bhagat Singh’s group declared they would not attend court, but go on hunger strike until the right was restored. Their demand was not about comfort, but about identity–the insistence that they were political prisoners fighting for their country, not common criminals to be stripped of rights. “There is tremendous nobility and dignity in this. Bhagat Singh and his friends were asserting their identity as freedom fighters, not common criminals, right from within the prison cell,” Prof Juss said.
The same conviction drove their demand regarding execution. They refused to be hanged. Hanging, they argued, was for criminals. As political prisoners, they were entitled to be shot. They held to that position to the end.
The files also record that on February 19, 1930, the government issued a press communique introducing new jail classification rules, dividing prisoners into categories A, B and C. Category A–the most favoured–was reserved for non-habitual prisoners of good character, education, social standing and what the rules called “habit of life”. The phrase was colonial code for prisoners who were Anglicised or Anglophile in their ways–a system designed, in effect, to reward collaboration with the occupier.
Legal masterstroke
Perhaps the most significant disclosure in the files is one that only a legally trained eye could have caught. Prof Juss believes he is the first person to have done so.
When Bhagat Singh’s case was transferred from the magistrate’s court to a specially constituted three-member tribunal–an extraordinary measure taken outside the normal judicial process–the accused refused to recognise its authority.
In handwritten documents now preserved in the files and never previously examined, they stated that they did not wish to “take any part in the proceedings of this case, because we do not recognise this government to be based on justice established by law”.
The distinction, Prof Juss explained, was constitutionally devastating. “They did not say the government was not based on justice. They said it was not based on justice according to law. Using English law itself–the very law the British had taught Indians–they were arguing that this special tribunal, set up at the whim of the Governor General outside the established courts, had no jurisdiction to try them. And if it had no jurisdiction, any sentence it passed was a nullity. It was unlawful. I think I am largely the only person, because of my training as a lawyer, who has been able to pick this up. Nobody else has,” he added.
The argument was legally sound, mounted by the accused themselves, from a prison cell, turning the tools of colonial law against the colonial state.
Building where it all happened
During one of his visits, Prof Juss walked out of the Anarkali civil secretariat and asked a question that had apparently never been formally answered: Where exactly did the Special Tribunal convene to try the Lahore conspiracy case?
Nobody in the area knew. He asked around, inquired further afield and eventually found it by driving through the city. It was Poonch House–named after the Maharaja of Poonch, and at the time functioning as a Revenue Department office. Outside the building, still intact, was a marble plaque in Urdu confirming that the Lahore conspiracy case was heard there in 1930. “No one knew where this building was,” said Prof Juss. Since his discovery, the Pakistan government–recognising its historic and tourism value–has refurbished the rooms, repainted the building and documented its significance.
Archive nobody opened: 165 files, not 135
For decades, it was believed that around 135 files on the Bhagat Singh case existed somewhere in the Lahore archives. As late as 2011, Professor Chaman Lal, a dean at Jawaharlal Nehru University, was urging someone go and examine them.
Celebrated journalist Kuldip Nayar had tried and failed. Author William Dalrymple had described the Punjab civil secretariat at Anarkali–guarded by army personnel with machine guns–as next to impossible to enter.
Prof Juss wrote to the authorities. They did not reply. He went anyway. “I knocked on the door and said ‘I am from London and I want to look at these documents’. They welcomed me with open arms,” he said.
Archive director Abbas Chuktai, himself deeply interested in Bhagat Singh, seated the professor in his own office, personally brought out the files and spent hours working through each one alongside him. The count confounded every prior estimate: not 135 files, but 165–30 more than the world had known about.
The files carry gallery admission passes for Bhagat Singh’s trial, naming those who came to watch. “His two aunts were there in that gallery–both had lost their husbands to the freedom struggle and were left childless. That is also why Bhagat Singh himself never married,” said Prof Juss. “And alongside them was Baba Gurdit Singh of the Komagata Maru ship–the man who had defied the British Empire a generation earlier. Their attendance passes are right there in the files. It tells you everything about the kind of movement this young man had become the centre of.”
The files also bear on the disputed location of the hanging. Shadman Chowk is widely cited as the site of the old Central Jail, demolished in 1965. The documents, examined by Chuktai and Prof Juss together, suggested the precise location required closer scrutiny.
All 165 files are now catalogued at the back of Prof Juss’s first book, The Execution of Bhagat Singh–the first such public record in existence. “It simply requires somebody to go back and go through these documents the way I did. I have been able to break the ice,” he said.
Man inside the cell
Bhagat Singh founded the Naujawan Bharat Sabha in March 1926 at the age of 18. Two years earlier, he had joined the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army. His entire active life, from 1924 to his execution in 1931, lasted just seven years–the last two spent in prison. “His entire period of activism was only seven years–from 1924, when he set up the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, to the time he was hanged in 1931,” said Prof Juss. “How many leaders alive today can boast of such an achievement in such short a time?”
In that cell, a librarian named Shashtri from the Dwarkadas Library in Lahore–associated with the Servants of the People Society–smuggled books to him at personal risk. The reading list was vast: Marx, Engels and Trotsky; Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Jefferson; Victor Hugo and Dostoevsky; Bertrand Russell; and the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore and Omar Khayyam. “Those who ridicule him forget that he was only 23 years old,” said Prof Juss. “How many in modern India today have the broad span of knowledge that he had? He was able to do that because prison librarian Shashtri smuggled books out for him.”
From that cell, Bhagat Singh produced over 130 documents–more than 400 pages of letters, court statements, pamphlets, essays and sketches. Many have still not been recovered. Still fewer have been read.
He was, Prof Juss argued, the intellectual forerunner of every major modern rights movement. “If you read his writings, you see that he is the intellectual forerunner of all modern rights movements–both Franz Fanon and Black Lives Matter,” he said.
Bhagat Singh could have lived, Prof Juss added. Gandhi was negotiating with Viceroy Lord Irwin at the very moment the execution date was fixed. A word could have commuted the sentence. The word was never spoken. “My grandfather would say how the death of this young man could have been avoided if only Gandhi had taken a stand with Viceroy Lord Irwin, but he chose not to. And so this poor young lad was hanged at just 23,” recalled Prof Juss, whose childhood in a Punjab village without electricity was lit by his grandfather’s late-night accounts of the freedom struggle.
Pakistan’s memory for a hero
Nothing in this research surprised Prof Juss more than what he found beyond the archive–the depth and spontaneity of Pakistan’s feeling for Bhagat Singh.
Every year on March 23, crowds gather at Shadman Chowk in Lahore–singing, reciting poems passed down through generations, raising slogans. The Punjab government of Pakistan has passed a resolution to rename it Bhagat Singh Chowk. “The only thing that prevents Bhagat Singh’s complete rehabilitation as an icon of freedom in Pakistan are the forces of religious extremism,” said Prof Juss. “Otherwise, the people of that land recognise the greatness he embodies even today.” The religious right has fought the renaming through the Lahore High Court since 2013.
A stranger Prof Juss met outside Lahore, on learning of the research, took him home, fed him a meal and recited a poem about Bhagat Singh that his forefathers had passed down across generations. “How many families in India today can boast the same,” asked Prof Juss.
This reverence had struck him even before he reached Lahore. When he visited the Pakistan High Commission in London to apply for his research visa, the High Commissioner’s response was instantaneous: “Sardarji, Bhagat Singh ta sada hero hai. Fikar na karo–you will get the visa.” He issued a year’s visa on the spot.
The hold Bhagat Singh has on Pakistan’s popular imagination is also rooted in a political vacuum. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was once the country’s only mainstream champion of the poor and of religious minorities–until he yielded to religious pressure in 1974 and legislated the Ahmadis as apostates. That image was shattered and never repaired. “That void that he left behind has been filled by Bhagat Singh,” said Prof. Juss. “The common man identifies with him–with what the future of the subcontinent should have looked like after Independence–like no other.”
In India, the story gets more complex. When the Congress came to power, the Gandhi-Nehru narrative crowded out the agrarian revolutionaries who had lived and died on the land. “He is the only person who alone unites the people of India and Pakistan,” said Prof Juss. “He alone among the leaders of the Independence movement was prepared to die for his country. Not Gandhi, not Nehru, and certainly not the Muslim League.”
The world Bhagat Singh wrote about–rising authoritarianism, shrinking freedoms, the poor and marginalised crushed by systems that serve the powerful–is more recognisable today. “Bhagat Singh speaks about the plight of the oppressed and the downtrodden today just as he did between 1924 and 1931,” said Prof Juss. “Do Indians know their history,” asked Prof Juss. “Only if they know their history can they truly begin to own it.”
Iran-Israel war LIVE Updates: US, Iran agree to 2-week ceasefire, Strait of Hormuz to reopen
US President Donald Trump pulled back on his threats to launch devastating strikes on Iran late Tuesday, swerving to deescalate the war less than two hours before the deadline he set for Tehran to capitulate to a deal.
Trump said he was holding off on his threatened attacks on Iranian bridges and power plants, as the US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire that includes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said it has accepted the ceasefire and that it would negotiate with the United States in Islamabad beginning Friday.
Neither Iran nor the United States said when the ceasefire would begin, and attacks took place in Israel, Iran and across the Gulf region early Wednesday.
Israel has also agreed to the ceasefire, according to a White House official who was not authorised to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Chinese officials encouraged Iran to find path to ceasefire with US: sources
April 8, 2026 8:20 am
Beijing: China, which is Tehran’s biggest trade partner, spoke with the Iranians to get them on board to look for a path toward a ceasefire in war with the US, sources said. Chinese officials were in touch with Iranian officials as the negotiations were evolving, two officials who were not authorised to comment publicly spoke on condition of anonymity. Beijing primarily had been working with intermediaries, including Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt, as it tried to use its influence, said one of the officials. (AP)
Pakistan invites US, Iran for talks in Islamabad
April 8, 2026 8:19 am
Islamabad: Pakistan on Wednesday invited the US and Iran for talks in Islamabad on Friday. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a social media post announced that the US and Iran, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire amid the ongoing West Asia conflict. “With the greatest humility, I am pleased to announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere, effective immediately,” he said. Sharif said Pakistan has invited delegations from both countries to Islamabad on April 10 for face-to-face talks aimed at reaching a conclusive agreement “to settle all disputes”. (PTI)
Oil prices sink, US stock futures jump as US, Iran agree to 2-week ceasefire
April 8, 2026 8:19 am
New York: Oil prices plunged below USD 100 a barrel and Asia markets and US stock futures jumped after the US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire that includes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. (AP)
Iran includes ‘acceptance of enrichment’ in Farsi version of its ceasefire plan
April 8, 2026 8:14 am
Tehran: Iran in the Farsi-language version of its 10-point ceasefire plan included the phrase “acceptance of enrichment” for its nuclear programme, something that was missing in English versions shared by Iranian diplomats to journalists. It wasn’t immediately clear why that term was missing. However, US President Donald Trump had said ending Iran’s nuclear programme entirely was a key point of the war. Trump, after Iran issued its 10-point plan, had described it as fraudulent, without elaborating. (AP)
Protesters in Iran express outrage at US, Israel after ceasefire agreement reached
April 8, 2026 7:57 am
Tehran: Pro-government demonstrators in the streets of Iran’s capital Wednesday morning after the ceasefire had been announced screamed: “Death to America, death to Israel, death to compromisers!” (AP)
Iraq’s Islamic Resistance says it is suspending operations for 2 weeks
April 8, 2026 7:50 am
Baghdad: The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed armed factions, said it would suspend its operations in Iraq and across the region for two weeks, according to a statement issued on Wednesday, in a move that follows announcements of a two-week suspension of hostilities between the United States and Iran. (Reuters)
