Daily briefing: New chapter of Punjab’s drug story; changes in criminal law Bills; and more

Punjab’s drug addiction story is entering a new chapter. Once overwhelmingly dominated by men, the drug crisis is now touching women too, in many ways similar to men — but with a social impact that has many more dimensions and frames a new challenge in the state’s war against drugs. Read our investigation.

But what is the government doing? Well, having inherited a scourge that has tested successive governments, the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab is trying a new approach, though how effective it is remains to be seen. We break down the state government’s strategy.

Big Story

Four Army personnel were killed and three injured when their vehicles were ambushed by militants Thursday evening near Dehra Ki Gali (DKG) in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir. Read our report.

From the Front Page

Calling for urgent reforms and transparency in the process of sovereign credit rating, the office of the Chief Economic Advisor in the Union Ministry of Finance, has said that methodologies used by agencies Fitch, Moody’s and S&P, are heavily loaded against developing countries like India due to an “over-reliance” on non-transparent and subjective qualitative factors.

Sanjay Singh, Brij Bhushan’s ‘nominee’, was elected president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) Thursday, defeating former Commonwealth Games gold medallist Anita Sheoran by a margin of 40-7. Meanwhile, Sakshi Malik announced her retirement.

Must Read

After 10 days of battling postpartum complications, Harmeet Kaur, was scheduled to be discharged from Chandigarh’s Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research. But the night before, a woman in the guise of a duty nurse went past the security, walked into the gynaecology ward and injected the new mother with a fatal cocktail of sleeping pills, sanitizer and household insecticide. An unconscious Harmeet spent the next 25 days on ventilator support until she finally succumbed on December 10. We take a look at the circumstances that led to this gruesome killing

From bringing terrorism and organised crime under the ambit of ordinary criminal law, introducing gender neutrality for offences pertaining to children, to repealing Section 377 that criminalised homosexuality, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Bill, 2023 makes several key departures from the Indian Penal Code it seeks to replace. We explain what the changes are

From today’s Opinion section, we take a look at Rohit Kansal and Dipankar Sengupta’s piece on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Article 370. “At its heart, the changes of August 2019 were as much about the expansion of economic opportunity as about the commitment to One Nation. With the legal debate behind us, the promise of enormous growth and employment is more real than ever,” they write.

And Finally

In Dunki, Shah Rukh Khan plays a soldier yet again this year after ‘Pathaan’ and ‘Jawaan’, but this third time around turns out to be unlucky: his vaunted first collaboration with Rajkumar Hirani is mostly a crashing bore. Read Shubra Gupta’s review of the movie

Delhi Confidential: Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri got a warning from Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Thursday when he told a few members that he would personally take up the matter with them. When AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi complained that Aurangabad didn’t have a single house under PMAY, Puri said he was not reading the statistics right. “I will help you to read the statistics,” he said. He also had a similar reply for BJP’s Gopal Shetty, when the Speaker intervened asking: “If you are going to sit with every MP to give them their answers, what should the members ask in Question Hour?”

🎧 In today’s edition of the ‘3 Things’ podcast, we discuss the significance of the remarkable rise in India’s GDP growth, delve into the havoc wreaked by heavy rains in Tamil Nadu and look at the reasons behind the skyrocketing garlic prices.

Until tomorrow,

Rounak Bagchi and Rahel Philipose

Business As Usual by EP Unny