DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 2025, LUCKNOW, LATE CITY, 18 PAGES `6.00 WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 CAMPUS CRACKDOWN Another student from India faces US action: Visa revoked, held US alleges Hamas ties, university says not aware of ‘any illegal activity’ DIVYA A NEW DELHI, MARCH 20 BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY X moves court against section in IT Act being used to block content X owner Elon Musk ARNAVCHANDRASEKHAR &SOUMYARENDRA BARIK BENGALURU, NEW DELHI, MARCH 20 BILLIONAIREELONMusk’ssocial media platform X (formerly Twitter)hasfiledalawsuitagainst the Central government, challenging the use of Section 79 (3) (b)oftheInformationTechnology Act, 2000, to issue blocking orders,claimingthatitleadstocreation of a “parallel” and “unlawful” content censorship regime. The company also sought protectionforitsrepresentatives and employees against coercive action for not joining Sahyog, a Ministry of Home Affairs portal, which it alleged, was a “Censorship Portal”. In its petition filed in the Karnataka High Court on March 17, the company contended that CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 TRUMP: RECIPROCAL TARIFFS ON INDIA FROM APRIL 2 PAGE 13 PAGE 1 ANCHOR Badar Khan Suri , a Jamia alumnus, is a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University. georgetown.edu toral fellow at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for MuslimChristian Understanding at the Edmund A Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington DC. The report said he was studying and teachingonastudentvisa,which has been revoked. Confirming the development, the Department of BIJAPUR, KANKER AssociatePartners Co-presentedby BILL GATES AT ADDA, ON FUTURE OF TECH Microsoft co-founder-turned-global health philanthropist Bill Gates in conversation with Anant Goenka, the Executive Director of The Indian Express Group, on the future of technology, Artificial Intelligence and its global impact, at the Express Adda in Mumbai on Thursday. Sankhadeep Banerjee CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 AN EXPRESS INVESTIGATION 3 yrs, 100 tigers killed & counting: new-age poaching mafia taps tech, digital payments, hawala networks Arrestrecords,officialsrevealcoalitionof gangs,pan-Indiareach,useof transporters,Myanmarroute Tiger traders switch to rhino horn routes, enforcement plays catch-up JAY MAZOOMDAAR NEW DELHI, KALKA, DEHRADUN, SAWAI MADHOPUR, MARCH 20 INVESTIGATORSFROMfivestates, four Central agencies, and the Interpol;threenationwidealerts; two critical meetings of chief wildlifewardens;overadozenarrests in five states this yearalone; and,asyndicatespreadacrossthe country’s tiger map. If theusualsuspectsinpoachingaresubsistencehunters,touts scoutingforestsettlementstofix deals and impoverished “carriers” in small towns sneaking skin and bones in polythene sacks on trains and buses, think again. A poaching network marked by an unusual coalition of groups from tribal communitiesincentral India, using digital payments with PRIME “hawalafunds” ACCUSED: and separate Sonu supply lines to Bawaria, and Ajeet Pardhi Nepal Myanmar, has taken out “100 to any number” of tigers since 2022 from various parts of India, an investigation by The Indian Express has found. This newspaper tracked arrest records and court documents, and interviewed forest officials, investigators and former poachers who became CONTINUED ON PAGE 9 JAY MAZOOMDAAR NEW DELHI, MARCH 20 A tiger caught on camera (above) in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur forests showed up as a skin-and-bone consignment (top) in Assam within six months in 2023. Special Arrangement Chandrapur to Aizawl, investigation tracked bank SMS, social media posts, tip-off from Shillong church JAY MAZOOMDAAR NEW DELHI, KALKA, DEHRADUN, MARCH 20 PAYMENT NOTIFICATIONS for Rs 18 lakh on a mobile left behind by an absconding poacher in Maharashtra and a social media post that led to a parish in Meghalayawereamongthecrucial clues that helped investigators unravel a key strand of a complex network of poachers and traders — believed to be behindthekillingof over100tigers across India over the past three CONTINUED ON PAGE 9 ROUTE TO MYANMAR: DELIVERY & PAYMENT INDIA ? ?? Sonu MYANMAR ? Lalneisung Lun David Kingpins Pardhis Hawala A/c A/c A/c A/c A/c Tiger parts supply A/c Zamkhan Hawala Go Lion Thang Digital payment FOR DECADES, the tiger mafia in India preferred the shortest routes to China's demanding markets: through Nepal and Tibet. The longer northeastern route to Myanmar, meanwhile, was the mainstay of rhino horn traders who took consignments out of Assam. Since the 1990s, periodic seizures of pangolin scales in Meghalaya and Mizoram did point to the northeast route for wildlife contraband sourced fromcentralIndiaalthoughtiger traders started significantly realigning their supply lines only just before the Covid pandemic. But even as the Myanmar route got busy with consignments of tigerboneandskinsby2022,the agencies tasked with busting them continued to operate in trenches. Somuchso,astringof arrests and seizures across India since mid-2023 failed to blow the lid off thesenew-agepoachingsyndicates — until this January. By then, as an investigating officer said, “the damage was done.” It is not difficult to see why. After Rajasthan’s Sariska CONTINUED ON PAGE 9 30Maoists,1 jawankilledin 2encounters inChhattisgarh Shah: Zero-tolerance, country will be Maoist-free by March 31 next year BASTAR: THE LAST MAOIST STRONGHOLD 917 Maoistskilledin over11years 134 217 112 RAIPUR, MARCH 20 IN TWO separate encounters in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region on Thursday, security forces gunned down 30 Maoists, police said. One District Reserve Guard (DRG) jawan was also killed. This takes the total number of Maoists killed in the state in the first three months of this year to 113, including 97 in the Kanker 97 69 65 51 47 40 30 35 20 JAYPRAKASH S NAIDU CHHATTISGARH Raipur Narayanpur Dantewada Bijapur 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025* JUST DAYS after an Indian doctoral student at Columbia Universityself-deportedafterher visa was revoked by the Donald Trump administration, another Indiannationalenrolledasapostdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University has been detained by US immigration authorities. According to a report in Politico, Badar Khan Suri, an alumnus of Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, was “detained by federal immigration authorities amid the Trump administration's crackdown on student activists whom the government accuses of opposing American foreign policy”. The report said that “masked agents” arrested Suri from outside his home in Virginia on Monday night. Suri is currently a postdoc- *Till March 20; Source:Chhattisgarh Police Bastarregion.Inthesameperiod last year, the number of Maoists killed in the state was 29, and in the whole of 2023, a total of 23 Maoists were killed. In Thursday’s encounters, 26 Maoists were killed in Bijapur district and four in Kanker — both in the Maoist-affected Bastar region. Thefirstencounterbrokeout at 7 am near Andri village while securityforceswereundertaking CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Uncalled for: SC raps UP cops for invoking conversion in rape case EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI, MARCH 20 THE SUPREME Court on Thursday rebuked the Uttar Pradesh Police over its handling of a case of alleged gang rape, remarking orally that it was being “biased” and that invoking the conversion law in the case was “uncalled for”. “Idon’twanttousetheword, the state police is also biased… how can it be? The facts speak for themselves, and you are invoking that Conversion Act for nothing,” Chief Justice of India SanjivKhannasaidwhilepresiding over a two-judge bench. The bench, also comprising Justice Sanjay Kumar, was hearing an appeal challenging the September 5, 2024, Allahabad High Court order denying bail to the man accused of forcibly converting a Hindu woman, who already had a daughter, to Islam and performing ‘nikah’ with her. Denyinghimbail,theHCsaid that“theConstitutionconferson each individual the fundamental right to profess, practice and CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Husain artwork in Oslo hospital to return to India — for record `118 cr VANDANA KALRA NEW DELHI, MARCH 20 SOMETIME AFTER 1964, a work of art, nearly 14 feet long and with 13 distinct vignettes, was placed in a private corridor at a hospital in Norway, donated by the family of a surgeon. It stayed that way for several decades until auction house Christie’s was alerted about it. The monumental 1954 canvas,Untitled(GramYatra),aneloquent tribute to rural and pastoral life in India, was made by the legendary M F Husain. On March 19, the artwork fetched a staggering$13.7million(around Rs 118 crore) at a Christie’s auction in New York, not only setting a new record for Indian art, but also marking the first time an Indian artwork has exceeded the Rs 100-crore mark. “We always anticipated that the work would perform well, but no one could have predicted such an outcome. It is certainly a landmark moment and continues the extraordinary upward trajectory of the modern and contemporary South Asian art market,” Nishad Avari, Head of Department, Indian Art at Christie’s,tellsTheIndianExpress. Ever since a colleague notified his team around 13 years ago about the location of the artwork at Oslo University Hospital, New York-based Avari had been awaiting the chance to bring this seminal work to the auction stage. The painting was donated to the institution in 1964 by the estate of Leon Elias Volodarsky, a Ukraine-born Norway-based doctor, following his death. A passionate art collector, Volodarsky had acquired The art, a 1954 canvas Untitled (Gram Yatra), is an eloquent tribute to rural and pastoral life in India. On March 19, it fetched $13.7 million at a Christie’s auction in New York. christies.com the canvas for his Oslo home whenpostedinDelhiinthemid1950s as head of a World Health Organisation team that was in India to establish a thoracic surgery training centre. The work, which was exhibited at the All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society (AIFACS) in Delhi at a 1954 exhibition titled ‘MF Husain and Krishen Khanna’, was transported to Europe soon after, where it remained largely hidden from public view — and India — for more than 70 years. It has been acquired reportedlybyKiranNadar,chairperson of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, following a fierce bidding war. KNMA, however, refused to comment on the sale. “It is a major breakthrough for Indian art with regard to the market and raises the value of Indianart,”saysarthistorianand curator Yashodhara Dalmia. She adds, “I believe the work was originally purchased by Volodarsky for Rs 1,400.” Thepreviousrecordformodern Indian art was $7.4 million, fetched by Amrita Sher-Gil’s The StoryTeller(1937),alsoboughtby Nadar in 2023 at a Saffronart auction in India. Painted at a key juncture in Husain's artistic trajectory and that of Indian art — when young artistsinthenewly independent nation were attempting to develop an avant-garde modernist idiom — Untitled (Gram Yatra) carries some of Husain’s most iconic images from the period. “The remarkable scale, subject CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Lucknow