Indian-origin restaurateur Harman Singh Kapoor has been arrested days after he announced that he is shutting down his 16-year-old restaurant Rangrez in the UK because of threats by Pakistanis and a lack of support from the police.Replying to one of the tweets, Kapoor confirmed his arrest. Without telling the exact reason behind his arrest, Kapoor said, “All I did was protect my family, yet I was the one arrested. Instead of protecting us, the police targeted my religion — my Sikh faith and my beliefs. This is deeply troubling.”Earlier, Kapoor disclosed that Muslims targeted his restaurant because, from day one, he chose not to sell halal meat, and for that reason, Pakistanis gave bad reviews. Kapoor said he does not care that his business failed, as he chose to close his restaurant and will now pursue activism full-time.In a series of tweets, Kapoor called Muslims inbreds and said: “Proudly we don’t sell Halal. We don’t cater inbreds.”“Proudly, I don’t sell halal, and because of this many individuals from the inbred community are unhappy and posting fake reviews. Rangrez restaurant will not cater to inbreds at the cost of tortured animals. Inbreds are not my customers,” he wrote in another post calling for the banning of halal in the UK.Who is Harman Singh Kapoor? Harman Singh Kapoor is a Sikh activist known for speaking out against Khalistani extremism. In 2023, he claimed his car was shot at and vandalised after he criticised the Khalistan movement. In recent months, Kapoor and his wife have also become increasingly vocal against Muslims. Shortly before announcing the closure of their restaurant, the couple shared a video warning parents about alleged “Love Jihad” cases in the UK and Australia. Kapoor claimed that many girls were being “brainwashed by Pakistani and Bangladeshi boys” and losing contact with their families, adding that he had been looking into several such cases. Kapoor has also faced criticism online. Some social media users alleged that he had been planning to enter politics alongside far-right activist Tommy Robinson. Others accused him of adopting anti-immigrant rhetoric despite being an immigrant himself, claiming he sought asylum in the UK as an Afghan Sikh refugee even though he was originally from India.

HYDERABAD: Nagarkurnool police detained a 17-year-old Intermediate student on Thursday for allegedly raping three minor girls of his age and impregnating one of them. Police arrested the accused’s 22-year-old friend, in whose house one of the survivors was raped, along with two doctors and a nurse of a private hospital for illegally carrying out an abortion procedure on a pregnant minor.The accused allegedly lured the survivors on the pretext of love and sexually assaulted them. He filmed the crimes and blackmailed the girls, pressuring them to pay up. He also threatened to release the videos on social media, and circulate them among family members unless they met his financial demands.The abuse unfolded over a period of several months in 2025, but came to light recently when one of the survivors, unable to tolerate the torment any further, broke down and confided in her parents, police said. Her family confronted the accused, thrashed him, seized his cellphone and handed him over to the cops along with the device.

“Based on her complaint, we investigated and found that he had sexually assaulted and blackmailed two other minor girls. Of the three survivors, one is from his college and two from other colleges,” Nagarkurnool SP Sangram Singh G Patil said. “The accused took the survivor he had impregnated to a local hospital for an abortion,” he added.Following three separate complaints, police booked the accused under Sections 14, 15, and Section 3 (rw 4) of the Pocso Act; BNS Sections 294 (circulating obscene digital content), 87 (kidnap), 77 (voyeurism), 64 (1) (rape); and Sections 67 (b) of the IT Act. The accused was sent to a juvenile home.“We have, so far, retrieved the videos of the assault on one survivor from the accused’s phone. We visited the hospital where the abortion was carried out, and seized its records,” DSP Srinivas Yadav said, adding that further investigation was underway.(The victim’s identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme court directives on cases related to sexual assault)

Mumbai: A decade and a half after the Right to Education (RTE) Act was implemented, the world’s largest schooling system is facing a learning crisis that threatens to undermine the massive gains in student enrolment. While the country successfully brought nearly 260 million children into classrooms, a recent paper from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), published in Education Policy Analysis Archives, points to a significant performance gap, with over 70% of students performing at basic or below-basic levels. The paper also notes that although enrolment in primary classes has improved, the system struggles to retain students as they grow older. Enrolment drops by around 17% by the time students reach Grade 9, when the legal mandate for free education under RTE Act expires, mentions the paper.The analysis, undertaken by professors Mythili Ramchand, who worked at TISS till 2024, looks at ‘the conceptions of equity and quality that have shaped varied policies and state reform efforts in curriculum, teacher education, RTE and also the latest National Education Policy (NEP) 2020′. The researchers examined school enrolment, sample-based national assessment surveys and central teacher eligibility tests (TET) to interpret the RTE. “Unlike earlier policy discussions on quality, the RTE Act uniquely articulates quality as a legally enforceable right for all children aged 6 to 14 years… What prompted our study was the observation that while the Act offered a robust framework with equity and inclusion at its core, subsequent interpretations, state-level formulations, and amendments appeared to have ‘hollowed out’ these conceptions of quality,” Chandran told TOI.Analysing the enrolment data, researchers noted that 73.65% of the population drops out before completing senior secondary school, as per the National Sample Survey Organisation. The risk is even higher for students from marginalized sections, where as many as 80% drop out before finishing Grade 12, at a point when education is most crucial for breaking the cycle of poverty.In the classroom, the data presents a stark picture of declining learning outcomes. As per the National Assessment Survey 2021, the proportion of students failing to meet proficiency levels rises in subjects sharply as they progress from Grade 3 to Grade 10. By the time they reach Grade 10, nearly 90% of students fall into the lowest performance categories in science and language. While the 2021 data also reflects the impact of school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic, the disruption disproportionately affected students from marginalised sections in the higher grades, further widening existing learning gaps.Even as the RTE ACT envisioned teachers as ‘transformative agents’, the reality has been a decline of professional credibility through ad-hoc appointments and narrow, managerial accountability measures. Additionally, the paper highlights how the central TET assesses teachers on school content knowledge with little emphasis on pedagogical knowledge and overall child’s development (see box).TISS researchers highlighted the ‘four important barriers’ that have contributed to the massive gaps in quality and equity in education — a narrow and instrumental definition of quality in the course of RTE implementation, a rigid examination system with no reforms, a weak teacher education system primarily operated by private players and a lack of desired budgetary allocation (less than 3% of the GDP, as opposed to 6% recommended in the RTE).Based on their experiences, Chandran suggested that policy makers take several measures, including a significant increase in investment by states, allowing more autonomy to schools and teacher education institutions to adopt quality measures suited to their contexts, moving away from content testing to robust pedagogical knowledge in teacher preparation. “Also, structural inequities through affirmative action should be addressed. The 25% reservation for economically weaker sections in private schools, while well-intentioned, has been critiqued as weakening govt school provisioning. The focus, therefore, must return to strengthening public schools as neighbourhood schools of equitable quality,” said Chandran.

Mumbai: The Director General of Shipping, in coordination with the Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian embassy in Baghdad, has initiated the process to repatriate the body of 54-year-old Kandivli resident Deonandan Prasad Singh, an additional chief engineer (superintendent), who was aboard the Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker MT Safesea Vishnu that was hit by an Iranian attack on Thursday.The body could be brought home once the airspace opens this week, sources told TOI on Saturday. The tanker was near Khor Al Zubair Port, in Basra, Iraq, when it was attacked in the wee hours of Thursday. Singh, who was among 17 Indians on board, suffered severe injuries during the attack and later died. Singh spoke with his family on Wednesday evening and assured them that everything was fine before the ship was attacked. He called his family again at around 2:36 am on Thursday and informed them that the ship was on fire. Afterwards, he did not respond to his family’s calls, a family member said. A source from Mumbai’s DG Shipping office told TOI: “Singh’s body, along with the rescued 16 Indian crews, will fly back once the airspace opens. The travel documents and the necessary local formalities are currently in process. At present, Iraq’s airspace remains closed. Further, subject to completion of all formalities and reopening of airspace, the repatriation of the seafarers as well as the mortal remains is expected to take place next week, if all arrangements proceed as planned.” Meanwhile, Iran’s official news agency IRNA said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) struck one of the two ships, a US-owned vessel, the Safesea Vishnu, because it had ignored warnings and failed to comply with orders. Indian authorities earlier said the Safesea Vishnu, which sailed under the Marshall Islands flag, was attacked by an unmanned speedboat. Meanwhile, Singh’s employer Bravo Shipping Management, did not respond to TOI‘s email related to an update on the incident. Originally from Bihar, Singh moved to Mumbai in 2019 and lived with his family at Raheja Eternity Society in Kandivli East. He is survived by his wife Kumkum Singh, daughter Komal Singh, a medical student at Nagpur medical college, and a son who is currently pursuing a management course in the United States.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday announced that the United States had carried out strikes on Iran’s key oil export hub at Kharg Island. The US president said the operation targeted critical energy infrastructure linked to Iran’s oil trade.Trump said US forces had “obliterated” military facilities on the island, which sits in the Persian Gulf and handles the overwhelming majority of Iran’s crude shipments to the global market. While the strikes stopped short of targeting the oil infrastructure itself, the US president warned that the energy facilities could be hit next if Iran interferes with shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints.

Kharg Island has long been considered Iran’s economic lifeline, with analysts warning that any sustained attack on the territory could cripple the country’s oil exports and deal a devastating blow to its economy.

Following the announcement, Iranian officials issued a stark warning, saying that any further attacks could lead to the destruction of oil and energy infrastructure across the region. The threat came amid rising tensions between Washington and Tehran after a series of military exchanges in recent days.

Iran’s oil lifeline

Kharg Island lies roughly 30 kilometres off the Iranian mainland in the Persian Gulf, near the port city of Bushehr. Despite its small size just around eight kilometres long the island plays an outsized role in Iran’s economy.Often described as Iran’s “oil lifeline”, Kharg handles around 90 percent of the country’s crude exports. Oil from major offshore fields such as Aboozar, Forouzan and Dorood is transported via subsea pipelines to the island, where it is stored and loaded onto massive tankers bound largely for Asian markets.Its geography makes it uniquely suited for this role. The waters surrounding the island are deep enough to accommodate supertankers, something that many Iranian ports along the shallow Gulf coastline cannot handle.Over the decades, Iran has turned Kharg into one of the world’s largest oil terminals. At peak capacity, the facilities there can load as much as seven million barrels per day, though current exports are closer to about 1.6 million barrels daily.Because so much of Iran’s export infrastructure is concentrated on this single island, analysts have long considered it a critical vulnerability. Any serious disruption could immediately choke off the majority of Iran’s oil revenues, which remain a central pillar of the country’s economy and a key source of funding for powerful institutions such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.Watch: $11 billion & counting; Trump bleeds American taxpayers with no Iran victory in sight

Why the island is strategically sensitive

The United States and Israel had previously avoided striking Kharg directly, largely because of the enormous economic and geopolitical consequences such a move could trigger.Energy analysts warn that targeting the island’s oil infrastructure would almost instantly halt most of Iran’s crude exports. That could provoke a major retaliation from Tehran, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s traded oil and liquefied natural gas normally passes.Iran has already demonstrated its ability to disrupt maritime traffic in the area. Missile and drone attacks in recent weeks have slowed shipping through the strait and raised fears of a wider energy crisis.Tehran has repeatedly warned that any attempt to damage its oil infrastructure would provoke an “eye for an eye” response, potentially including attacks on energy facilities in neighbouring Gulf states.That risk explains why the latest US strikes appear to have targeted only military installations on the island rather than its vast oil storage tanks and loading terminals. Trump himself acknowledged this calculation, saying he had deliberately chosen not to destroy the energy infrastructure.Watch: Iran bombs 5 US military aircraft; big confirmation from DC as IRGC hits KC-135 planes in Saudi

A strategic prize in a wider war

Beyond its economic importance, Kharg Island also holds significant military and historical value. The island has been heavily fortified over decades and is guarded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.Its strategic location has made it a coveted asset for centuries. European powers including the Portuguese and the Dutch once attempted to control it because of its position along historic trade routes in the Gulf.In modern times, the island has endured repeated conflict. During the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, Iraqi forces repeatedly bombed Kharg in an attempt to cripple Iran’s oil exports. Although heavily damaged, the facilities were eventually rebuilt and expanded.Today the island remains a tightly controlled zone with limited civilian presence, dominated by oil terminals, pipelines and military installations.

A resurfaced interview from 1988 has drawn fresh attention after US President Donald Trump ordered strikes on Iran’s strategic Kharg Island, revealing that the US president had spoken about attacking the same target nearly four decades ago.In the interview with The Guardian, Trump, then a New York businessman, spoke about taking a tough line against Iran. Asked what he would do if he were in power, he said the United States needed to respond forcefully to Iranian actions in the Persian Gulf.

Also read: Trump shares video of US bombing Iran’s crucial oil hub Kharg Island“I’d be harsh on Iran. They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools,” Trump said. “One bullet shot at one of our men or ships and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it.”

Trump argued that Iran was pushing the United States around despite being locked in a difficult conflict with Iraq. “Iran can’t even beat Iraq, yet they push the United States around,” he said. “It’d be good for the world to take them on.”The decades-old remarks resurfaced after the White House shared a snippet of the interview following US military strikes on Kharg Island, which hosts the main terminal for Iran’s crude exports. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared the excerpt, saying the president’s views on Iran had remained unchanged for years.“President Trump has been remarkably consistent his entire life on Iran,” she said. “Anyone who says otherwise has not been paying attention.”Also read: Israel’s strike kills 12 medical workers at Lebanon clinic amid escalating Middle East conflictTrump recently said US forces had “obliterated” military targets on Kharg Island, located about 30 kilometres off the Iranian mainland in the Persian Gulf. The island is central to Iran’s oil trade and handles the vast majority of its crude exports, making it one of the country’s most important economic lifelines.While the strikes reportedly targeted military facilities rather than oil terminals, Trump warned that Iran’s energy infrastructure could also be hit if Tehran continues to interfere with shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical route for global oil supplies.Iran’s military has responded with sharp warnings, saying oil and energy infrastructure linked to companies cooperating with the United States could be “destroyed and turned into a pile of ashes” if Iranian facilities are attacked.