NEW DELHI 20 JULY 2025 SUNDAY `12 PAGES 24  facebook/TheMorningStandard  X.com/TheMornStandard https://epaper.morningstandard.in The Geometry of Feeling Reimagined Stardom in All Its Glory and Wreckage PLUS: 12 PAGES MAGAZINE EXCLUSIVE VOICES HOLIDAYS IN HELL Devdutt Pattanaik Ravi Shankar Aditya Pittie Anuja Chandramouli The Death of the Internet Neha Sinha Prabhu Chawla Shankkar Aiyar Shyam Bhatia Ass You Like it in Wesel Facing Maya Within Woman Who Refused to Flinch AMMA SPEAKS Nothing is Insignificant New road to Daulet Beg Oldie near LAC by next yr-end M AYA N K S I N G H @ New Delhi CHINA Daulet Beg Oldie Saser Murgo Sasoma LADAKH Shyok Leh INDIA Durbuk Map not to scale A new road to the strategically significant Depsang and Daulet Beg Oldie (DBO) near the Line of Actual Control along the China border in Ladakh is expected to become fully operational from November 2026. The new road, which runs almost parallel to the existing Darbuk-Shyok-Daulet Beg-Oldie (DSDBO) road, follows the alignment of Sasoma-Saser LaSaser Brangsa-Gapshan-DBO. The under-construction road is Plans afoot to make it an all-weather road about 130 km long and has nine Plans are on to make it an all-weather road. The BRO is working on a bridges of 40 tonne capacity . At present, the DSDBO is the 8-km-long tunnel at Saser La. Currently it is at the detailed project report stage. It will take 4-5 years to complete the tunnel project only road link to DBO. But parts of the road are under the direct observation of Sources said, “We ber-November next year.” Sunday the Chinese forces. Behave completed everyFor the forces, the new road Special thing from Sasoma to will facilitate faster troop-arsides, it has around 37 bridges of various lengths Saser Brangsa and mament movement away from and widths, making it that ahead of it towards east- the enemy’s line of sight. “Almuch more vulnerable. The 255ward — Murgo and Gapshan. most all artillery weapons, inkm DSDBO road ends at DBO, Over 70% work is done. We are cluding Bofors howitzers, were which is about 20 km away from certain that the entire stretch moved on this axis till Saser the Karakoram Pass. will be operational from Octo- Brangsa to test its load carry- Worrying rise in violence against women; private university’s student blames teachers for death Miscreants set 15-yr-old girl on fire in Odisha A S I S H M E H TA A N D R A J K U M A R M O H A N T Y @ Bhubaneswar/Puri Accused won’t be spared: CM Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said stringent action will be initiated against perpetrators of the crime. “Her health condition is being monitored. If needed she will be airlifted to Delhi Criminals have become emboldened under this government and are not worried about punishment Naveen Patnaik, Former CM THE horror run of atrocities against women continued as Odisha woke up to the shocking attack on a 15-year-old girl who was set on fire by a group of miscreants in Puri district on Saturday morning. The minor girl, who suffered over 70 per cent burn injuries, was rescued by locals and shifted to AIIMS-Bhubaneswar. Preliminary investigations suggest the attack was premeditated. The girl was on her way to a friend’s house in a village under Balanga police station limits, 37 km from Bhubaneswar, when three youths gagged her with a handkerchief and abducted her on a bike, police said. They took her to the bank of Bhargavi river where she was doused with inflammable substances. In a bid to save her life, the girl ran towards nearby houses and cried for help, when a local resident came to her rescue and doused the flames before alerting police. The girl belonged to a minority community . The girl’s parents lodged an FIR with Balanga police station, police said, adding she was a Class 8 dropout and her father works at an automobile repair workshop. The incident comes close on the heels of the self-immolation by a 20-year-old student in Balasore. Executive director of AIIMS-Bhubaneswar Dr Ashutosh Biswas said the girl suffered 70 per cent burn injuries. “She is in ICU but without ventilator support... The next 72 hours are very crucial,” he said. Odisha Director General of Police Y B Khurania said special teams have been formed to nab the perpetrators. Not a ‘super cop’ to probe ‘anything & everything’: Madras HC pulls up ED R S I VA KU M A R @ C H E N N A I Congress activists raise slogans after the girl’s suicide in Greater Noida | PTI BDS STUDENT DIES BY SUICIDE, FACULTY HELD N A M I TA B A J PA I @ Lucknow A second-year BDS student died by suicide due to alleged harassment by faculty members at Sharda University in Greater Noida on Friday . Soon after the university suspended two faculty members, both were arrested by police on Saturday since Jyoti Sharma, 21, had named them in her suicide note. The student from Gurugram took the extreme step in her hostel room inside the university . A suicide note was recovered from the scene in which the student accused her teachers, from PCP and Dental Materials department, of harassment and humiliation, and held them responsible for her extreme step. “If I die, Mahendra Sir and Sherry Mam will be responsible for my death. They tortured me mentally and humiliated me. I have been in depression because of their behaviour for a long time. I want them to suffer the same The two teachers named by the student in her suicide note | PTI way as I am. …Sorry I cannot .. bear it anymore,” the student wrote in her note. Dr Ajit Kumar, director, PR, Sharda University, assured that the guilty would be punished. “Two teachers named by the victim have been suspended and a probe committee has been set up,” he said. The matter is currently under investigation, said Sudhir Kumar, additional DCP Great, er Noida. The student was found hanging by her roommates who alerted the hostel warden after receiving no response at her door, following which police were alerted. EXPRESS READ Uddhav blames MVA squabbles for poll defeat Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Saturday said internal squabbles and ego clashes among the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners led to their defeat in the Maharashtra assembly polls, despite strong performance in Lok Sabha elections just five months earlier. | P8 CBI arrests two BSF personnel in bribery case The CBI on Saturday said it has arrested an Assistant Accounts Officer of the Pay and Accounts Office within the Border Security Force in Delhi, while accepting a bribe of `40,000 from the complainant. The agency registered a case against the accused and other unknown persons. THE Madras High Court has come down heavily on the Enforcement Directorate (ED), saying the agency is neither a “super cop” to investigate anything and everything that catches its eyes nor a “drone” to attack at will on any “criminal activity”. The observations were made while ordering the release of `901 crore fixed deposits of the Chennai-based RKM Powergen Private Limited. The company filed petitions in the court challenging a January 31 ED order to freeze the amount. The central agency had proceeded against the company under the PMLA based on a 2014 FIR registered by the CBI over allocation of coal blocks for running a thermal power plant in Chhattisgarh in 2006. CBI registered the cases under relevant sections as per the FAITH BECKONS A fresh batch of 6,365 pilgrims, including 1,499 women, leave the Bhagwati Nagar base camp for Amarnath, in Anantnag of Jammu & Kashmir on Saturday | PTI SICK of long traffic snarls between Delhi and Gurugram? There’s good news on the horizon! A new high-speed corridor is in the offing, set to significantly reduce travel time between the two cities. What once took over an hour on crowded highways like NH-48 or MG Road could soon be reduced to just 25 to 30 minutes. A direct link starting from either Gyarah Murti or Talkatora Stadium to Gurugram is currently being explored. This project is part of two major proposals aimed at easing traffic congestion in Lutyens’ Delhi and Central Delhi, as per government officials. According to sources, this idea was discussed during a meeting in June, chaired by Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Delhi CM Rekha Gupta, and senior officials. The National Highways Authority of India was asked to draw up a detailed plan to tackle congestion. The second proposal under directions of the Supreme Court, which cancelled the coal allocation based on a PIL. The ED registered an ECIR under PMLA in the same year. While CBI filed a closure report in July 2017 finding no material of foul play in allocation of coal blocks, the CBI special court in Delhi did not accept the same and wanted further probe on certain aspects, including the environmental clearance. Subsequently, in August 2023, CBI filed a supplementary final report finding incriminating materials for prosecution for criminal conspiracy, cheating and corruption. Based on this, the ED conducted searches on January 31, 2025 and issued orders to freeze the fixed deposits. “There should be a ‘criminal activity’ which attracts PMLA ... there should have been proceeds of crime,” the bench said in the recent order. EPSTEIN FILES TO BE UNSEALED Under pressure from his own supporters, the Trump administration has asked a federal court to unseal secret documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case in an effort to put to rest a political crisis largely of its own making. P9 Trump’s latest: ‘5 jets were shot down’ during India-Pak conflict J AYA N T H J A C O B @ New Delhi AFTER again claiming he brokered peace between India and Pakistan during the four-day standoff following Operation Sindoor, a claim repeatedly denied by the Indian government, US President Donald Trump has now said that “five jets were shot down” during conflict in May . He, however, did not clarify whether the losses were suffered by one side or both. Speaking at a White House dinner for Republican senators on Friday, Trump said: “We stopped a lot of wars. And these were serious, India and Pakistan that was going on. Planes were being shot out of there. I think five jets were shot down, actually These are two serious . High-speed corridor in the pipeline to cut Delhi-Gurugram travel time E X P R E SS N E WS S E R V I C E @ New Delhi ing capacity sources said. ,” The new road will also beef up the Siachen battlefield as it branches off from Sasoma in the Nubra Valley, which is on the route to the Siachen Base Camp from Leh. The route will converge with the DSDBO at Murgo, reducing the distance from Leh to DBO by 79 km — from 322 km via DSDBO road to 243 km via the new road. It will also reduce the travel time from two days to 11-12 hours. discussion focuses on a major elevated corridor or tunnel aimed at connecting the DelhiMeerut Expressway with the planned elevated route from AIIMS to the Mahipalpur Bypass. This is expected to reduce traffic congestion on Ring Road and the Mehrauli-Gurugram route, officials said. Core of the plan is the 20km elevated corridor from AIIMS to Mahipalpur Bypass, which is designed to act as an alternative to NH-48. nuclear countries, and they were hitting each other.” Trump again claimed that the US defused the situation using trade leverage. “But India and Pakistan were going at it, and they were back and forth, and it was getting bigger and bigger, and we got it solved through trade.” New Delhi has consistently dismissed Trump’s repeated assertions, maintaining that the ceasefire on May 10 was achieved through direct communication between Indian and Pakistani military officials, without any foreign involvement. The brief conflict followed Operation Sindoor, launched by India on May 7 in response to a deadly terror attack in J&K’s Pahalgam. Since then, Trump has repeatedly said that his administration played a key role in ending the standoff and preventing further escalation. Hours later, he described the BRICS as a little group that wants to take over the “dominance of the dollar”. “And I said anybody that’s in the BRICS consortium of nations, we’re going to tariff you 10%,” Trump told reporters at the White House. P7 Wife, cousin arrested for plotting man’s electrocution E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ New Delhi NEARLY a week after the death of a 36-year-old man, who was initially believed to have died of electrocution in the Uttam Nagar area, the Delhi Police on Saturday arrested his wife and his cousin on suspicion of murder. The incident came to light on July 13 when a call was made to the PCR from Mata Rooprani Maggo Hospital in Uttam Nagar, informing them about the electrocution of Karan Dev. Initially the family did not suspect any foul play in the death. , However, the family members later discovered a chat between the victim’s wife and another person, in which she informed that she had given sleeping pills to Karan. This prompted the victim’s brother to approach the police. As per cops, the woman, identified as Sushmita, and her partner Rahul (Karan’s cousin) have been held. They allegedly drugged Karan before electrocuting him at his home. Sushmita then raised an alarm, claiming he was electrocuted accidently .