Bengal
Surinder Koli, the prime accused in the infamous 2006 Nithari serial killings who was acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2025, was found dead in Haridwar on September 18. The incident followed a national seminar in Visakhapatnam where senior jurists and media professionals scrutinized investigative lapses by the CBI and questioned the lack of media follow-up for the victims’ families.
In a startling turn of events, Surinder Koli, the prime accused in the 2006 Nithari serial killings who was acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2025, was found dead inside his Haridwar tea stall on September 18. The incident closely follows a national seminar in Visakhapatnam where senior jurists and experts scrutinized the press and the CBI over systemic investigative failures that denied justice to victim families.
The Election Commission of India has frozen the Trinamool Congress name and ‘Flowers & Grass’ symbol for the October 6 bypolls, assigning separate interim designations to factions led by Mamata Banerjee and Arup Roy. Amid an urgent Supreme Court challenge by the party supremo, an emerging Congress-Mamata alignment has prompted the resignation of Trinamool’s Nandigram nominee.
Tension gripped the Nawabganj area of Old Malda after the mysterious death of a Class IX student on Wednesday.
The mysterious death of minor girl Srishti Keshari in Malda town has once again sparked political controversy across West Bengal.
In a major post-election legal development, sports promoter Satadru Dutta has filed an official police complaint against former West Bengal Sports Minister and TMC leader Aroop Biswas, accusing him of sabotaging international football icon Lionel Messi’s visit to Kolkata in December 2025. Filed at the Bidhannagar South police station on Monday, May 18, 2026, the FIR also names former DGP Rajeev Kumar and senior bureaucrat Santanu Basu. Dutta alleges that Biswas extorted 22,000 complimentary tickets for black-market sales and forced 10,000 unauthorized political associates onto the Salt Lake Stadium pitch, compromising Messi’s Z-plus security and forcing the star to flee after just 20 minutes. Dutta, who previously spent 38 days in jail as a “scapegoat,” stated that the recent political change in Bengal gave him the courage to act, following a fresh probe ordered by the newly appointed BJP Sports Minister, Nisith Pramanik.
The West Bengal government has granted sanction to prosecute former RG Kar Medical College and Hospital principal Sandip Ghosh in connection with alleged financial irregularities during his tenure at the institution.
The historic May 2026 West Bengal Assembly election results have exposed a stark reality for the INDIA bloc: their greatest adversary was not the BJP’s organizational strength, but their own structural disunity. While the BJP secured its maiden triumph with 45.84% of the vote, a simple look at the electoral arithmetic reveals that a united opposition would have fundamentally altered the outcome. The Trinamool Congress (40.80%), CPI(M) (4.45%), and Congress (2.97%) commanded a combined 48.22% of the electorate, yet old grassroots rivalries and a proprietorial mindset from Mamata Banerjee fragmented the anti-BJP vote. This tactical isolation culminated in the shocking fall of the TMC’s Bhabanipur bastion to Chief Minister-designate Suvendu Adhikari. As Rahul Gandhi extends a post-verdict olive branch on social media, the defeat serves as a definitive warning that without humility and compromise, favorable demographics remain nothing more than meaningless statistics
Police arrested a local leader associated with the All India Trinamool Congress following allegations of extortion at a toto stand in Malda district.
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