Al-Qaeda had planned a bomb blast in Lucknow before Bakra Eid. Sources told The Daily Guardian that an e-rickshaw was supposed to be used to carry out the terrorist attack.

Minhaj Ahmed had entrusted Masiruddin alias Musheer with the responsibility to carry out the blast. For this, a cooker bomb was to be set in an e-rickshaw, its connection was to be connected to the e-rickshaw battery, and the plan was to explode it in the parking area of a marked place so that more people could be killed and harmed.

Youths from more than 10 districts were in touch with terrorists arrested from Lucknow, Minhaj and Musheer. After taking the two on police remand, the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh has started fresh interrogation and information is being collected about their associates. 

Sources said that two youths who were in constant contact with Minhaj have also been questioned. Both the terrorists were also confronted with two armed smugglers who were taken into custody. The ATS is also investigating whether the two smugglers had prior knowledge of Minhaj’s plans. 

As per the investigation so far, information has also been received about some residents of Lucknow, Kanpur, Sambhal, Moradabad, Meerut, Saharanpur and a few other districts being in constant contact with Minhaj, mostly through social media.

Meanwhile, on the basis of information received from Minhaj and Musheer, arrested by UP ATS on Sunday, Shakeel was also arrested. ATS arrested Shakeel, a resident of Wazirganj Janata Nagar, near Buddha Park, on Wednesday morning. According to an ATS official, Shakeel was being searched for the last three days. 

Raids were conducted in several areas of Lucknow but he was not found. On Wednesday morning, Shakeel’s location was found in the Wazirganj area. Shakeel, an e-rickshaw driver by profession, was caught by the ATS team near Buddha Park. The ATS team took him straight to the headquarters and is scrutinising the details of his mobile. 

After the arrest of Minhaj and Musheer in Lucknow on Sunday, ADG (Law and Order), Uttar Pradesh, Prashant Kumar told reporters, “UP ATS has uncovered a big terror module. The team has arrested two terrorists linked with Al Qaeda›s Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind.”

The suspects were plotting terror attacks across Uttar Pradesh ahead of 15 August (Independence Day), said ADG Kumar. He added that agencies have reasons to believe that the suspects were planning to carry out attacks, including “human bomb” attacks in crowded places.

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Wednesday met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi and told him in no uncertain terms that unilateral change of status quo along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) was not acceptable to India. Jaishankar had a one-hour meeting with Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Dushanbe SCO Foreign Ministers Meeting.

“Discussions focused on the outstanding issues along the LAC in the Western Sector. Highlighted that unilateral change of status quo is not acceptable. Full restoration and maintenance of peace and tranquility in border areas is essential for development of our ties. Agreed on convening an early meeting of the Senior Military Commanders,” Jaishankar said after the meeting.

During the meeting, both parties also agreed on convening an early meeting between senior military commanders of India and China.

India and China have been locked in a military standoff at multiple friction points in eastern Ladakh since May last year. However, the two sides completed the withdrawal of troops and weapons from the North and South banks of Pangong Lake in February following a series of military and diplomatic talks.

The impasse between Indian and Chinese troops at the LAC is “visibly impacting” bilateral ties “negatively”, Jaishankar told Wang. Highlighting the lack of movement in the disengagement process apart from the initial withdrawal of troops around the Pangong area in February, he said that India had hoped China would “follow through” in resolving issues at the LAC, as had been agreed in a five-point agreement with Wang when the two Ministers had last met in Moscow last September. “Full restoration and maintenance of peace and tranquillity in border areas is essential for development of our ties,” Jaishankar said in a tweet after the hour-long meeting.

Last week, Jaishankar had said that Beijing has not observed agreements on the border issue, which has “disturbed” the foundation of bilateral ties. “I would say, for the last 40 years, we had a very stable relation with China… China emerged as the second-largest trade partner…But for the last one year, there has been a lot of concern about the relationship because China has not observed agreements it had signed up for when it came to our border,” said Jaishankar, who is in Moscow on a three-day visit,” Jaishankar had said in response to a question on China-India relations at the Primakov Institute of World Economy & International Relations in Moscow.

Jaishankar is representing India at the SCO foreign ministers’ meeting. Apart from Jaishankar, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi are among the participants at the meeting.

Ajoy Chawla, CEO of Titan’s Jewellery Division joined us for an exclusive interview as part of NewsX India Alist. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Titan’s Jewellery business that houses iconic brands such as Tanishq, Mia, Zoya and CaratLane. Zoya, the exquisite diamond boutique from the House of Tata, is a luxury brand of fine jewellery, renowned for its expert craftsmanship and distinguished design.

Talking about the launch of Zoya’s new collection ‘Samave‘, Chawla said “It a signature collection from Zoya, which draws inspiration from architecture, more specifically the Indian step wells, and it is also a metaphor of a connection between the woman, her own inspiration as well as the inspiration from the feminine power of the tribe.”

Explaining further, Chawla said “If you look at the step wells, it’s a marvellous piece of architecture, very Indian. It’s layered, it’s intimate. It’s tucked away. It’s a place where women meet other women as they come in search of water. Water is a metaphor for life. And even as the woman is descending down the steps where she is in our own way undertaking a journey of self-discovery, discovering our own inspiration while connecting deeply with other women, very intimately in fact, in Sanskrit the meaning of the word summary is to unite to come together to connect intimately.”

“We thought it’s a wonderful way to kind of capture the entire metaphor. It’s an all-white diamond only collection with straight lines clean lines, both in rose gold and white coat, and the versatile collection has rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets,” added the Intrapreneur.

Sharing insights on strategy during the lockdown and how that has worked for the brand, the CEO said “As a young brand it still has a long way to go but it’s a niche brand opportunity to grow in a country like India in itself is great. Our target customer has not really been impacted, at least economically. This time around, of course, there has been a certain humanitarian impact much more than last time. It’s been brutal, for many people. But if I look at last year Zoya grew, despite losing out the first three months, it grew for the year at about 14-15%.”

“Of course, driven by the growth of new points of sale that we added. We added a store in Bangalore during the last lockdown and it has done very well for us. Even before the pandemic broke, despite us not getting a chance to launch it in a big way because of social distancing restrictions, etc but it has done very well. We have added galleries, which are like shopping shops in select Tanishq stores in Bombay, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Kolkata. And by the end of this month in Chandigarh, the footprint of Zoya has grown beyond Bombay, Delhi Bangalore to include these other towns as well.” elaborated Chawla.

Zoya’s personalized service focuses on providing an unmatched buying experience for its exclusive products. Zoya now extends its service through video-assisted jewellery advisory, home trials, contactless delivery and interactive e-catalogues.

Speaking on digital marketing and digital sales which has become the new normal, the CEO said “For all categories of products, and even for jewellery, we have seen that customers prefer safety and convenience of digital. And during the last year in fact we saw, Zoya customers really take up to remote, shopping, as well as digital so it could be that it is initiated by the customer getting on to the website booking an appointment, or it could be from the store side. In addition to that, what we are seeing is that as people come online, they still want a personalized experience and seamless experience.”

“We are soon also hoping to launch a members-only portal and we can take this personalization story even further. We have also continued to offer curated personalized experiences at home,” added Chawla on a concluding note.

Ranganath Thota is the founder of Fueladream and is doing social entrepreneurship via this platform. Mr Thota in an exclusive interview with NewsX India Alist said “The objective is to try and build something that could help over a million people and the only way you could do it is through this concept called Crowdfunding. Crowdfunding means the act of a number of people coming together to fund something that they believe in.”

The switch from a media person to a social entrepreneur was because of a turning point that happened six years ago. Mr Thota said, “I used to be in the corporate world for about 30 years where I worked across consumer products, media, worked in India, China, South-east Asia. About six years back I realised I was not making a lot of money and it was not as gratifying as I thought it should be. I realised that helping others was more satisfying and meaningful. I literally sold everything and decided to start this crowdfunding platform. I read about it for half an hour, discovered what it is and moved to Bangalore six years back.”

When asked what sets it apart from other competitors, Mr Thota said, “What we discovered is that when people fund creative and innovative ideas, they are overwhelmed and passionate about it and that’s why they support it. Similarly when they fund something for a social need, then they have compassion. You have compassion at one end and passion at the other. But in many cases, people are the same. So, for example, we could fund the education for a child and also something as an electric bike.”

Speaking about one of his innovations he said, “For example, there is a smart wallet with a chip in it that connects to the phone. If you lose your wallet you can actually call it with your phone and if you lose your phone you can call it with your wallet. You can actually use the phone camera and take pictures using the wallet. This project was funded four years ago. But the same person will help people with cataract surgery and education. So the same person can be driven by compassion and passion.”

“The second thing is about giving behaviours. In social media, we talk about the food we eat, the holidays we take and the pictures we like but we never talk about giving. It is never understood. But there is a huge science in consumer behaviour related to giving which is very different. Crowdfunding also has a science and has four key elements that go into it. It includes storytelling, technology, consumer behaviour and most importantly, communication. Unless you know all this, you cannot do crowdfunding.”

“The other thing we do is teach crowdfunding to a large number of people. They could be corporate people, students, etc.”

When asked about how he builds rapport, Thota said, “Nine out of ten people don’t know how to crowdfund even if their intention is good. They need a lot of hand rolling and that is where I and my team actually support them. The other important thing is raising funds. There are a lot of things that we need to understand about the projects that need fundraising. A lot of people come to us with great projects but what they don’t realise is that if they raise five times the amount that they are planning to, they actually cannot execute it. Unlike other platforms where you can start a campaign in an hour, with us it takes two days.”

Talking about the success rate he said, “typically it is about 70%. But if some projects don’t work well it is simply because the person doing it doesn’t manage it well, it is not like the story is not good.”

Ahead of the release of the upcoming Bollywood movie Toofan on Amazon Prime, Actors Farhan Akhtar, Mrunal Thakur, Paresh Rawal and filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra joined NewsX for an exclusive conversation as part of NewsX India A-List. As part of the conversation, the team of Toofan opened up about the storyline, plot, the experience of working with each other and much more. Read excerpts:

Speaking about what drew him to the story, Farhan said, “To start with, there is a message in the film, which will reveal itself when you watch the film. At the heart of it, it is about acceptance of each other. It is about not judging people for their labels that you may associate with them, recognising a person, loving a person or disliking them based on character. There are many different things in the film, apart from the boxing. Boxing is the backdrop against which is set. To me, the message of the film was exciting. I was like who is that person that i can speak to regarding this thought or realising the idea in a way that one would hope that it could be. I reached out to Rakeysh and said ‘Please hear this. If you are interested, lets do it together. I am really glad that he got into it.”

Talking about what made him come on-board,  Paresh Rawal said, “Before i even heard the story, I wanted to work with Rakeysh Ji. I wanted to work with Farhan Bhai and his company Excel because they are doing some great work. Later, when I heard the story, I felt that there are some stories that are created and there are some you release. This was a story of soul, heart and brain, so I felt that we should do it and it is very important for this film to exist. When you work with such people, you feel that you will not only be able to do good work but also become a better person. I think the takeaway of this film is that you should come out as a better person. This is what I feel. This is my takeaway.”

When asked about the USP of the film, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra responded, “USP is a very product kind of definition- What is the unique selling proposition? How can you sell emotions? I would say that the unique sharing proposition. Let’s re-term USP. All we want is to share love though this film and relationships. There are so many wounds in the society today and all over the world. We are going through a very difficult time. Instead of scratching the wounds, if one can apply a soothing balm over it, this film heals you. All characters in the film are broken and they fix each other. That’s the beauty of it. When you see these characters and you see Farhan’s character, Paresh sir’s character, Mrunal’s character, they are all carrying very deep wounds but how they resolve that and how they resolve it for each other, how they come together and fall apart and come together again is a process of healing. For me, that was the most important thing.”

“As mentioned earlier, Farhan called me and I heard the story, the idea and the thought. I told Farhan that we must do it. It has got a voice, a expression and it has got something to say. It was a potential. It was a nascent thought at that time but we thought that we can develop it and take it further. It became even more fortunate as more and more conspirators joined in,” he added.

On being quoted as saying that ‘Toofan is the mix of Rang De Basanti and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Rakeysh clarified, “I think that was misquoted. I would like to correct that through your platform. I said if I were to put together Rang De Basanti and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is equal to Toofan for me. I feel that I have come out much more enriched as a human being, not just as a technician, as a director in my profession but as an overall human being. I became much more enriched and then  I came out of Rang De and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. It’s beautiful to keep  finding that and reinventing yourself and to grow in life. You can never stop growing.”

Expressing her gratitude on being a part of Toofan and her fondness towards her character, Mrunal Thakur said, “Ananya is a very special person, very close to my heart. I think I have evolved with her, I have become more passionate. Like there is a leadership quality in her. She likes to lead people, especially those who are a little distracted and do not know what they are capable of. As Mrunal, I resonated with the character so much when I read the script and when  I was on set with Farhan and Paresh Ji. I think it all elevated the performance. I was feeling the character more than I was performing or acting so to say. What was beautiful was the journey, to be able to work witth Rakeysh sir- I love him,  I love his work and I did manifest to work with him. Finally, I get to work with Rakeysh sir.”

Was Toofan like a school being surrounded by Farhan Akhtar, Paresh Rawal and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra? Mrunal says, “No matter how much I learnt in school or acting school, it wasn’t enough because I actually learnt about life, how to deal with those problems. Ananya maybe strong but Mrunal wasn’t.  There were times when I did get confidence from Farhan or Paresh ji and the beauty about this film was that we never rehearsed those lines. What we had was conversations before we did the scene. Rakeysh sir helped me to connect those incidents and circumstances with my personal life. When  I was performing, I could get flashes and memories from all those incidents that happened in the past. I am really honoured and blessed to be a part of such a brilliant film. I have never been so motivated after doing a film. I was never into fitness but when I was see Farhan perform and see him train, he would inspire me.”

Renowned political thinker and economic expert, Dr Suvrokamal Dutta joined us for an exclusive conversation as part of NewsX India Alist and talked about the tumultuous journey of his past while he is finally about to get into politics full-fledged. Dr Dutta is a renowned media celebrity, foreign policy, political and economic expert and was the youngest team member of the Vajpayee govt. He has also served as the former National Executive Member of BJP.

Sharing about his early days Dr Dutta said, “I used to be very flamboyant right from my childhood. I was vociferous in my debates and public talks. Unlike many, I never had stage fright, I was quite politically conscious and had a tendency to be the leader in class. With that in mind, I thought like I should go into something which is related to public services and public dealings. I graduated in Economics and did my research from JNU in Economic History of India with the Asia Pacific. I also got into student politics at JNU. I joined ABVP in the Marxist bastion which was a big challenge. Later on, I got involved with the Vajpayee government. I used to look after youth affairs and culture for the youth wing. I also used to go for the state elections and parliament elections at that time.”

Dr Dutta mentioned, “Since my career combination is more of business, politics and public relations, I definitely have an urge to get into politics finally. I always had this dream right from my childhood of being in parliament once in my lifetime. That tendency is still there, I don’t know if it will be fulfilled or not. But the way things are going I might have the opportunity to represent the people of India.”

When asked about his career as an expert and commentator in news channels and columnists he said that the latter one started as a thankless job in the 90s. Dr Dutta said, “I was the first one to talk about many concepts like the BRICS, the Shanghai Corporation and IPSA. I wanted to do this for the larger public good. I used to write very good research articles on my area and send them to different newspapers for publication on the editorial page but for almost two years I was not obliged. I always used to get a letter from the editor saying that, “Sorry, your piece was very good but we cannot take this, might be in the next issue.” I remember the first break I got in media was one of the national newspapers in English. That was after two and a half years of struggle and it was just four sentences of my quote. That’s how I started. After that, I got splashed in the media in all the editorial pages of the reputed journals and newspapers.

Adding to that, he talked about his journey in electronic media. Dr Duttta said, “Later on right before 2004, I entered into the electronic media. One of the channels had given me a break in a particular issue that was boiling at that time in relation to JNU. The same happened with other channels including yours.”

Dr Dutta also talked about the B2B business, highlighting Atmanirbhar Bharat. “We have MoUs with Russia, Sri Lanka, Mauritius and other countries for doing better business, especially catering to the ease of business and Atmanirbhar Bharat as the prime focus in relation to India.”

To encourage the youth, Dr Dutta advised that there is nothing that can replace hard work. It is the only sustainable approach for the long run even though that comes with its own share of troubles. He advised the younger generation to remain alert and grab every valuable opportunity from the goldmine that India is.