Daily Briefing: A Delhi horror story; an ‘absent’ Rahul Gandhi in Gujarat; and more

Good morning,

The House of Horrors

A love story that began on dating app Bumble near Mumbai in 2019 came to a chilling end inside a rented one-room flat in Delhi, where a 28-year-old man allegedly strangled his 27-year-old live-in partner, chopped her body into over 30 parts and spent the next two-three months dumping them in a forested area nearby.

Their relationship was a turbulent one with friends alleging that the accused, Aaftab Poonawala, “mentally tortured her (Shraddha Walkar) and physically assaulted her several times”.

In shocking revelations about his crime, Poonawala allegedly told the police he was inspired by the US television crime series Dexter to carry out the act. He also allegedly brought another woman to his flat on a date while his partner’s body parts were stuffed in a fridge. 

Using potpurri and room freshners to mask the stench, Poonawala took several measures to hide the murder, right under the nose of neigbhours.

Only in the Express

Rahul Gandhi has so far been absent from the high-stakes Gujarat campaign. Congress leaders, however, remain positive, relying on the “indirect” impact of the Bharat Jodo Yatra and his long-distance monitoring. 

From the Front Page

India’s retail inflation eased to a three-month low of 6.77 per cent in October, helped by a slower rise in food inflation and the base effect. However, this marks the tenth month it has stayed above the RBI’s tolerance band of 2-6 per cent.

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In its latest issue, RSS-affiliated magazine The Organiser has accused e-commerce giant Amazon of funding religious conversion in the country’s Northeast through the American Baptist Church. It also alleged that ABM was running a front named All India Mission (AIM) in India. Amazon, however, has denied any relationship with AIM.

In its long-term strategy to address the climate crisis, the government said that India would need “tens of trillions of dollars by 2050” to transition to a low-carbon development path that would take it to the promised net-zero status by 2070.

Must Read

Reminding all of a scene straight out of a typical Pawan Kalyan movie, the Jana Sena Party chief arrived at Andhra Pradesh’s Ippatam in style last week to meet families whose houses had been partially demolished as part of a road-widening project. Sitting on the roof of his speeding SUV with his legs casually stretched out, Kalyan reached Ippatam in, according to his supporters, the ‘Power Star style’.

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In the last one decade, the number of Indian students annually picking the US for higher education has more than doubled, with the country’s share in the total number of international students going up from 11.8 per cent to 21 per cent, says the Open Doors Report 2022. The growth rate of Indian students heading to the US is likely to surpass China in 2022-23, with 82,000 visas issued between June and August this year — the highest number among all countries. 

The past week has arguably been one of the most dramatic in the world of cryptocurrency with FTX, the world’s second biggest crypto exchange, going bankrupt, affecting an estimated 10 lakh-plus people who were barred from withdrawing funds. We explain how this fiasco is going to impact the crypto industry.

Heads of state and governments belonging to 20 of the world’s major advanced and emerging economies (G20) will commence a summit in Bali on Tuesday. Since the last summit in Rome, prospects of the global economy have worsened. Let’s take a look at how the G20 leaders can work towards finding solutions at this year’s summit.

And Finally…

From Germany and Japan to Iran and Switzerland, 16 out of the 32 countries that will descend upon Qatar this week for the 2022 FIFA World Cup have a ‘Lionel Messi’ of their own. Some will be in Qatar, and a few won’t. But therein lies the story: What can be a bigger, better compliment for a player than most of his bitter rivals naming their best players and prodigious talents after him? In that sense, this World Cup is an ode to Messi.

Delhi Confidential: Union minister Hardeep Puri, on a visit to J&K, tweeted a photo from BJP’s Srinagar’s office with the lines “kamal ka phool, kamaal ka phool, vikas ka phool…” Congress social media tech head Prashant Pratap Singh responded by rhyming Puri’s name with “bhel puri, pani puri, aloo puri” and asked if the “sycophancy” was complete — or “poori”. This tweet seemed to have been inadvertently liked by Puri’s official account, before being un-liked later.

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🎧 In today’s episode of the ‘3 things’ podcast, we talk about one of the original Ghar-Wapsi campaigners, Dilip Singh Judeo, and the Punjab government’s decision to ban the public display of firearms and songs that glorify violence.

Until tomorrow,

Sonal Gupta and Anandu Suresh