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India and the United Kingdom has signed a Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement. The free trade agreement will benefit Indian farmers, the micro, small and medium enterprises sector, footwear and jewellery exports, as well as the seafood and engineering goods sectors, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the trade deal would help British workers in cutting-edge manufacturing, and would also benefit whiskey distillers across Scotland and the service sector in London, Manchester and Leeds.

The free trade agreement was signed by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and his British counterpart Jonanthan Reynolds during Modi’s visit to the UK.

New Delhi and Britain had announced the agreement in May after more than three years and 14 rounds of negotiations. Read on.

The Supreme Court has stayed a Bombay High Court order acquitting 12 persons accused in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case. However, it said that those who were released following the verdict will not have to go back to jail while the matter is being heard.

The case pertains to the seven bomb blasts in suburban trains on Mumbai’s Western Railway line on July 11, 2006, killing 189 persons and injuring 824.

Following a trial under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, a special court had in October 2015 convicted the 12 persons. However, on Monday, the High Court acquitted all of them holding that the prosecution had “utterly failed” in establishing their guilt. Five of the accused persons had been sentenced to death.

The Maharashtra government challenged the acquittal on Tuesday. Read more.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a contempt petition against Assam’s chief secretary and Goalpara district authorities for alleged violations of its earlier guidelines during eviction and demolition drives that took place last month. The bench sought the responses of the officials within two weeks.

The contempt plea was filed by eight residents of Hasilabeel village in Goalpara who claimed that that authorities issued eviction notices to the resident of the area just two days before razing their homes last month.

The petition relied on a Supreme Court judgement from November that held as illegal the practice of demolishing properties of persons accused of crimes as a punitive measure. It added that processes must be followed before removing allegedly illegal encroachments.

Between 2016 and August 2024, more than 10,620 families – the majority of them Muslim – have been evicted from government land, according to data provided by the state revenue and disaster management department. Read on.

The Enforcement Directorate conducted raids at over 35 premises and searched 50 companies and 25 persons as part of its money-laundering investigation linked to industrialist Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group companies. The investigation is based on two cases filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation in September 2022.

The first information reports pertained to two separate loans given by the crisis-hit Yes Bank to Reliance Home Finance Limited and Reliance Commercial Finance Limited.

It has been alleged that loans of around Rs 3,000 crore received by the companies from the bank between 2017 and 2019 were illegally diverted

This comes days after the Union government told Parliament that the State Bank of India had classified Reliance Communications and Ambani, its promoter-director, as “fraud”. Read more.

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